Libertarian Communist Review

Putting the record straight on Bakunin
The role of a revolutionary organisation
From Primitive to Libertarian Communism

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Bakunin 3

The Role of a Revolutionary
Organisation 5

From Primitive to Libertarian
Communism 8

Reviews 15

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Published by AWA, 13 Coltman Street, Hull,
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After a lapse of two years, the LIBERTARIAN
COMMUNIST REVIEW appears again.

We regard its appearance as an important
development in the field of libertarian thought and
action.

The LIBERTARIAN COMMUNIST REVIEW is
not intended to be a magazine for mass-produced
dogma. We intend to look at the history and theory
of the anarchist and libertarian communist movement
in a critical way. We hope to examine the flaws and
inadequacies in the writings of the most noted
libertarian socialist thinkers, and we intend to conduct
a critical reappraisal of Marx and Marxist thinkers,
and of the theory and praxis of left communist and
libertarian socialist movements that run parallel with
the anarchist movement.

Above all, we hope to rejuvenate and advance
libertarian communist theory in the context of the
present and the future.

It was probably true to say that the first LCR
was launched before the libertarian communist
movement was capable of supporting it. This was at
the same time as the development of the Organisation
of Revolutionary Anarchists (now the Anarchist
Workers Association) with its struggle to establish the
skeleton of a national organisation and a monthly
newspaper.

The need for greater theoretical discussion and
development as the precondition for further advance
and material and political resources now enable us to
renew publication.

We make no bones about the REVIEW being an
integral part of the work of the AWA but this does
not mean we shall exclude non-members from its
pages. This is not due to any confused view that all
ideas are valid or deserve publicising but because part
of the work of the libertarian communist organisation
is to force developments, by its activities and its
arguments within both the broader libertarian and the
socialist movements.

We welcome contributions from members of the
AWA, from sympathisers and from comrades in other
libertarian socialist groupings. Send manuscripts
(typed double space on one side of the paper please)
to LCR Editorial c/o AWA, 13 Coltman Street, Hull,
Humberside.

EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE

//jo//-yw/.s

The following text is a translation from
the French. It comes from Solidarite
Ouvriere, the monthly paper of the
Alliance Syndicaliste Revolutionnaire et
Anarcho-syndicaliste. We have many
criticisms of syndicalism, and this

includes its anarcho-syndicalist variant.

However, the ASRAS, in its
reassessment of the libertarian movement,
its committment to revolutionary class
politics and,to a materialist dialectic,
represents one of the more worthwhile
and progressive libertarian groups in

France, along with the Organisation
Communiste Libertaire and the Collectif
pour un Union des Travailleurs
Communiste Libertaire.

Future issues of LCR will contain
critiques of anarcho-syndicalism.

putting the record straight on

Mikhail Bakunin

On the eve of the centenary of Bakunin,
the return of all the gross stupidities which
have been said about Bakunin requires a considerable
work. Without hesitation whatsoever, the prize for falsification
goes to Jacques Duclos, the former head of the PCF, who has devoted
a huge book of several hundred pages to the relationship between Marx
and Bakunin, which is a masterpiece of fiction.

Now is the time to compile a catalogue of falsifications that surround
Brkunin. For if Duclos holds — with Marx himself — the sad privilege
of the thought of Bakunin, the anarchists are unrivalled in being his
greatest unconscious falsifiers. Of the things in common that the two
leaders of the First International have, the foremost is perhaps that
their thought has been misrepresented in an identical way by
their own disciples. We wish here to follow the development
of this misrepresentation of Bakunin’s positions.

Later, we will explain what we think to be his
true theory of revolutionary action.

Bakunin continually moves between the
mass action of the proletariat and action
of organised revolutionary minorities.
Neither of these two aspects of the
struggle against capitalism can be
separated: however, the libertarian
movement after the death of Bakunin
divided into two tendencies which
emphasised one of the two points while
neglecting the other. The same
phenomenon can be found in the Marxist
movement with the reformist social
democrats in Germany and the radical
and Jacobin social democrats in Russia.

In the anarchist movement, one
current advocates the development of
mass organisation, exclusively acting
within the structures of the working class,
and arrives at a state of a-politicism
completely foreign to the ideas of
Bakunin; another current refuses the very
principle of organisation as this is seen as
the beginnings of bureaucracy: they
favour the setting up of affinity groups
within which individual revolutionary
initiative and the action of example will
facilitate the passage without transition
to an ideal communist society, where
everyone will produce according to their
his/her ability and will consume according
to his/her need: joyful work and taking
from the common store.

The first current advocated the action
of the mass of workers within a structured
organisation, collectivisation of the means
of production and the organisation of

these into a coherent whole, preparation
of the workers for social transformation.

The second current completely refused
authority and the discipline of
organisation; tactically this is seen as
temporisation with capital. This current
defines itself in an essentially negative
way: against authority, hierarchy, power
and legal action. Its political programme
is based in the concept of communal
autonomy, directly inspired by
Kropotkin, in particular The Conquest of
Bread. This current triumphed in the
Congress of the CNT at Saragossa in 1936,
whose resolutions expressed
misunderstanding of the economic
mechanisms of society, scorn for
economic and social reality. The Congress
developed in its final report “The
confederal concept of libertarian
communism”, founded on the model of
organisational plans of the future society
which flourished in socialist literature of
the 19th century. The foundation of the
future society is the free commune. Each
commune is free to do what it wishes.
Those which refuse to be integrated
outside the agreements of “conviviencia
collectiva” with industrial society could
“choose other modes of communal life,
like for example, those of naturists and
nudists, or they would have the right to
have an autonomous administration
outside the general agreements”

In today’s parlance, one could say that
the followers of Bakunin can be divided

in one “right wing deviation” which is
traditional anarcho-syndicalism, and one
“leftist deviation” which is anarchism.

The first one emphasises mass action,
economic organisation and methodology.
The second one hangs on to the objectives,
“the programme” quite independent of
immediate reality. And each of these
cyrrents claims for itself — by the way
very frequently — Bakunin.

We have distinguished four principal
misrepresentations of Bakunin’s thought:

SPONTANEISM From time to time,
Bakunin seems to sing the praises of
spontaneity of the masses; at other times
he affirms the necessity of mass political
direction. In general anarchists have clung
to the first aspect of his thought, and
completely abandoned the second. In
reality, Bakunin said that what the
masses lacked in order to emancipate
themselves was organisation and science,
“precisely the two things which constitute
now, and have always constituted the
power of governments” (.Protest of the
Alliance). “At the time of great political
and economic crisis, when the instinct of
the masses, greatly inflamed, opens out
to all the happy inspiration, where these
herds of slave-men manipulated, crushed,
but never resigned, rebel against the yoke,
but feel themselves to be disoriented and
powerless because they are completely
disorganised, ten, twenty or thirty men,
well-intentioned and well-organised

3

amongst themselves, and who know where
they’re going and what they want, can
easily carry with them a hundred, two
hundred, three hundred or even more”
(Oeuvres 6, 90).

Later on, he says, similarly, that in
order that the minority of IWMA can
carry with it the majority, it is necessary
that each member should be
well versed in the principles of the
International.

“It is only on this condition,” he says
“that in times of peace and calm will he
be able to effectively fulfil the mission of
propagandist and missionary, and in times
of struggle, that of a revolutionary leader.”

The instrument for the development of
Bakunin’s ideas was the Alliance of
Socialist Democracy. Its mission was to
select revolutionary cadres to guide mass
organisations, or to create them where
they didn’t already exist. It was an
ideologically coherent grouping.

“It is a secret society, formed in the
heart of the International, to give it a
revolutionary organisation, and to
transform it and all the popular masses
outside it, into a force sufficiently
organised to annihilate political, clerical,
bourgeois reaction, to destroy all religious,
political, judicial institutions of states.”

It is difficult to see spontaneism here.
Bakunin only said that if the revolutionary
minority must act within the masses it
must not substitute itself for the masses.

In the last analysis, it is always the
masses themselves that must act on their
own account. Revolutionary militants
must push workers towards organisation,
and when circumstances demand it, they
must not hesitate to take the lead. This
idea contrasts singularly with what
anarchism subsequently became.

Thus, in 1905, when the Russian
anarchist Voline was pressed by the
insurgent Russian workers to take on the
presidency of the soviet of St Petersburg,
he refused because “he wasn’t a worker"
and in order not to embrace authority.
Finally, the presidency fell to Trotsky,
after Nossar, the first President, was
arrested.

Mass action and minority revolutionary
action are inseparable, according to
Bakunin. But the action of revolutionary
minorities only has sense when it is
linked to mass working class organisation.
If they are isolated from the organised
working class, revolutionaries are
condemned to failure.

“Socialism ... only has a real existence
in enlightened revolutionary impulse, in
the collective will and in the working
class’s own mass organisations - and
when this impulse, this will, this
organisation, falls short, the best books
in the world are nothing but theories in a
vacuum, impotent dreams.”

APOLITICISM Anarchism has been
presented as an apolitical, abstentionist
movement by playing with words and
giving them a different meaning to that
which the Bakuninists gave them.

Political action, at the time, meant

parliamentary action. So to be
anti-parliamentarian meant to be
anti-political. As the marxists at this
moment in time could not conceive of
any other political action for the
proletariat than parliamentary action, the
denial of the electoral mystification was
understood as opposition to every form
of political action.

The Bakuninists replied to the
accusation of abstentionism by pointing
out that the term was ambiguous and that
it never meant political indifference, but
a rejection of bougeois politics in favour
of a “politics of work”.

Abstention is a radical questioning of
the political rules of the bourgeoisie’s
game.

“The International does not reject
politics generally. It will certainly be v
forced to involve itself insofar as it will
be forced to struggle against the bourgeois
class. It only rejects bourgeois politics.”

Bakunin condemned suffrage as an
instrument of proletarian emancipation.

He denies the use of putting up candidates.
But he didn’t elevate abstentionism to the
level of an absolute principal. He
recognised a degree of interest in local
elections.

He even advised Gambuzzi’s
parliamentary intervention.

Nowhere in Bakunin will you find
hysterical, vicious condemnations that
became dear to anarchists after his death.
Elections are not condemned for moral
reasons, but because they risk prolonging
the bourgeoisie’s game. On this point,
Bakunin proved to be right over and
above the Marxists, right up to Lenin.

Anti-parliamentarianism was so
unfamiliar to Marxists that from the start
of the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks
- at least at the beginning - passed as
Bakuninists in the European workers’
movement.

THE REFUSAL OF AUTHORITY The

Bakuninists called themselves
“anti-authoritarians”. The confusion that
arose as a result of the use of this word
has been bitterly taken up since Bakunin’s
death. Authoritarian in the language of
the time meant bureaucratic. The
anti-authoritarians were simply
anti-bureaucratic in opposition to the
Marxist tendency.

The question then was not one of
morals or character, and attitude to
authority influenced by temperament. It
was a political standpoint.
Anti-authoritarian means “democratic”.
This last word existed at the time but
with a different meaning.

Less than a century after the French
Revolution, it described the political
practices of the bourgeoisie. It was the
Bourgeoisie who were “democrats”.

When it was applied to the working
class movement, the word ‘democrat’ was
accompanied by ‘social’ or ‘socialist’, as in
‘social democrat’. The worker who was a.
‘democrat’ was either a ‘social-democrat’
or anti-authoritarian.

Later democracy and proletariat were

associated in the .expression ‘workers
democracy’.

The anti-authoritarian tendency of the
International was in favour of workers
democracy; the tendency qualified as
authoritarian was accused of bureaucratic
centralisation.

But Bakunin was far from being
opposed to all authority. His tendency
allowed power if it came directly from
the proletariat, and was controlled by it.

He opposed the revolutionary government
of the Jacobin type with insurrectionary
proletarian power through the organisation
of the working class.

Strictly speaking, this is not a form of
political power but of social power.

After Bakunin’s death, anarchists
rejected the very idea of power. They
only referred to the writings that were
^ critical of power, and to a sort of
metaphysical anti-authoritarianism.

They abandoned the method of
analysis which came from real facts. They
abandoned this as far as the foundation
of Bakuninist theory based on materialism
and historical analysis. And with it they
abandoned the field of struggle of the
working class in favour of a particular
form of radicalised liberalism.

THE CLASS MOVEMENT Bakunin s
political strategy did not depart from his
theory of the relations between the
classes. This should be established once
and for all.

When the proletariat was weak, he
advised against indiscriminate struggle
against all the fractions of the
bourgeoisie.

From the point of view of working
class struggle, not all political regimes are
equivalent. It is not a matter of
indifference whether the struggle is
against the dictatorial regime of Bismark
or the Tsar, or against that of a
parliamentary democracy.

“The most imperfect of republics is a
thousand times better than the most
enlightened monarchy.”

In 1870, Bakunin recommended using
the patriotic reaction of the French
proletariat and turning it into
revolutionary war. In his Letters to a
Frenchman he makes a remarkable
analysis of the relationships between the
different fractions of the bourgeoisie and
the working class, and develops some
months in advance and prophetically,
what were to be the Paris and provincial
Communes.

A thorough reading of Bakunin shows
that his entire work consisted of constant
enquiry, the relationships which could
exist between the fractions which make
up the dominane class and their
opposition with the proletariat. His
strategy for the workers movement is
intimately linked with his analysis of
these relationships.

In no case can it be seperated from
the historical moment in which these
relationships take place. In other words,
not every time is ripe for revolution, and
a detailed understanding of the

4

relationship of forces between the
bourgeoisie and the working class permits
one at the same time not to miss suitable
occasions and to avoid making tragic
mistakes.

Bakunin’s successors thought, on one
hand, that there existed between the
bourgeoisie and 'the proletariat a sort of
immutable and constant relationship; on
the other hand, that the relationship
between the classes could not in any way
enter into the scheme of theings to
determine revolutionary action. In the
first case, they adopted a certain number
of basic principles that were considered
essential, and they gave themselves the
objective of putting them into practice at
some time or another in the future,
whatever the circumstances of the
moment.

Thus, the report of the Saragossa
Conference already mentioned could have
been written at any period. It stands
absolutely outside time.

On the eve of the Spanish Civil War,
the military problems for example, and
agitation in the heart of the army, are
dealt with one phrase: “Thousands of
workers have been through the barracks,
and are familiar with modern
revolutionary warfare.”

In the second case, they thought that
the relationships of power between the
classes were unimportant as the
proletariat must act spontaneously. It is
not related to any social determinism, but
on the contrary to the hazards of
exemplary action. The whole problem lies
then in creating the right detonator.

The history of the anarchist movement

is full of these sensational actions, which
were useless and bloody. In the hope of
encouraging the revolution, they attacked
the town-hall by the dozen: they made
speeches, they proclaimed — very often in
an atmosphere of complete indifference —
about libertarian communism. They burnt
local archives whilst waiting for the police
to arrive.

Attentism or voluntarism, in either
case the reference made to Bakunin is
insulting. Very often, the libertarian
movement has replaced the scientific
method of analysis of relations between
classes with magical incantations. The
scientific and sociological nature of
Bakuninist analysis of social relations and
political action was completely rejected
by the libertarian movement.

The intellectual failure of the
libertarian movement can be seen in the
accusations of ‘marxism’ made about every
attempt to introduce the slightest notion
of scientific method in political analysis.

For example Malatesta said: “Today, I
find that Bakunin was in political
economy and in the interpretation of.
history, too Marxist. I find that his
philosophy debated without any
possibility of resolution, the contradiction
between his mechanical conception of the
universe and his faith in the effectiveness
of free will over the destinies of man and
the universe.”

The “mechanical conception of the
universe”, that is in Malatesta’s mind, is
the dialectical method which makes of
the social world a moving whole, about
which one can determine general laws of

evolution. “The effectiveness of free will”
is voluntarist revolutionary action. The
problem can therefore be reduced to the
relationship of mass action on society and
the action of revolutionary minorities.

Malatesta is incapable of understanding
the relationship of interdependence which
exists between the human race and
environment, between the social
determinism of the human race and its
capacity to transform the environment.

The individual cannot be separated
from the environment in which he/she
lives. Even though the individual is largely
determined by environment, he/she can
act upon it and modify it, provided the
trouble is taken to understand the laws of
evolution.

^ONpLUSION The action of the
working class must be the synthesis of
the understanding of the “mechanics of
the universe” — the mechanics of society
- and “the effectiveness of free will”
conscious revolutionary action. There lies
the foundation of Bakunin’s theory of
revolutionary acton.

Two Bakunins do not exist — one
which is libertarian, anti-authoritarian
and who glorifies the spontaneous action
of the masses; the other one ‘marxist’.
authoritarian, who advocates the
organisation of the vanguard.

There is only one Bakunin, who applies
to different times in diverse circumstances
principles of action which flow from a
lucid understanding of the dialectic
between the masses and the advanced
revolutionary minorities.

The role of a

THIS essay attempts to clarify what we
libertarian communists and revolutionary
anarchists mean by a revolutionary
organisation. The definition of a
libertarian revolutionary organisation is
brought out in bold relief by its
contrast to the Leninist and other
authoritarian organisations; also by its
organisational and political disagreements
with the informal groupings of the
traditional anarchists.

What truly distinguishes the
libertarian Communist organisation is its
relationship With the working class, its
theoretical elaboration of that relationship
and a precise understanding of class

spontaneity. It becomes increasingly
more important to attempt this
clarification. The crisis in capitalism, on
every level (economic, social, cultural
and sexual) is reflected in the crisis in the
Left organisations. These organisations
duplicate ruling class values in their
authoritarianism, their high degree of
centralism, and the sheep-like submission
of the rank and file to “omnipotent” and
“all-wise” leaderships.

As the crisis in capitalism becomes
more extreme, the related crisis in the left
parties deepens, with schism after schism,
opportunism and collaboration with the
agents of the bosses, the Labour Party. It

is vital that a strong libertarian movement
in all areas of social life is created in order
for working people to defend themselves
against the ever-more frenzied attacks of
the capitalists, and to create a free
self-managed society. To assist in the j
building of such a mass movement, a ;
libertarian revolutionary organisation is \
necessary, an organisation that fights for'
the co-ordination of all anti-capitalist \
struggles. Such an organisation must have
a structure that ensures permanent
political debate and is controlled by the
whole membership in a truly democratic j
way.

The libertarian revolutionary

5

organisation must expose the
authoritarianism and elitism of the
Leninist groups, and show that these
groups do not in actual fact advocate
socialism but a form of state capi talis m

CLASS SPONTANEITY

"The emancipation of the workers must
be brought about by the workers
themselves. ’’Declaration of the First
International.

"The working class by itself can only
attain trade union consciousness. ”

Lenin, What is to be done?

A vast abyss of theory and practice
lies between these two statements. We
reject the Leninist concept which springs
from the managerial strata and the
intelligentsia and which seeks to dragoon
the workers into a new form of
oppression-the “workers” state.

We support the theory of working
class spontaneity. It is important to
understand what we mean by this; the
concept has been distorted and
misunderstood for too long. We don’t
take the “unhistorical” attitude that
some traditional anarchists defend: that
the working class springs into
revolutionary activity with no links with
previous struggles, and no previous
agitation by revolutionary minorities. On
the contrary, the work of revolutionaries
over many years in taking part in,
clarifying, and co-ordinating struggles in
the working class and elsewhere, greatly
helps the revolutionary process.

What we mean by working class
spontaneity is, its abilities to take direct
action on its own behalf, to develop new
forms of struggle and of organisation.
(This can be seen in every great
revolutionary upsurge where working
people have thrown up councils and
committees independent of the
“vanguards”. During the struggles of the
last few years, we have seen the flying
picket used by hospital workers and
miners, and the mass picket by miners
and engineers at Saltley Coke Depot.)

The activities of the working class
have taken place regardless of, and
sometimes against, the pontifications of
the revolutionary ‘elites’.

"Let us put it quite bluntly: the errors
committed by a truly revolutionary
workers movement are historically far
more fruitful and valuable than the
infallibility of even the best central
committee. ” Rosa Luxembourg,
Organisational Questions of Russian
Social Democracy.

The experiences of working class life,
at the point of production and elsewhere,
and within the context of the ever
changing ground of the class struggle,
constantly lead to the development of
ideas and action which question the
6

established order.

On the other hand, the ruling class
seeks to reinforce and perpetuate the
fragmentation of working class solidarity
e,g, through control of the media and
education, through racism and sexism. At
the same time, different sections of the
working class reach different degrees of
consciousness.

The libertarian revolutionary
organisation understands this. It also
realises that the only possible proletarian
revolution is one in which workers use
mass action to take power and smash the
apparatus of the ruling class, and that
class itself. Any other revolution cannot
by its nature be proletarian, and only ^
leads to the formation of a new ruling
class.

Understanding these facts, the
anarchist organisation recognises it has
several specific and important tasks to
perform for the rest of the class.

IDENTIFICATION

The anarchist organisation must always
see itself as part of the class. In order to
strengthen this identification it seeks to
develop and extend its influence in the
class.

At the same time, the anarchist
organisation must recognise itself as being
in ideological advance of the class as a
whole. Ideological advance should not be
confused with practical advance for, as
we have said, workers everywhere learn
new modes of struggle and new forms of
organisation that can benefit other
workers. The anarchist revolutionary
organisation must always be ready to
learn from the class and should be
expected to constantly revise its tactics
with the unfolding situation. It should
always realise it is not infallible, does not
have all the answers all the time. It learns
from the class as well as pointing out the
lessons to the class. It is transformed as
the working class is tmasformed in the
revolutionary process.

Because it is part of the class and at
the same time a distinctive organised
tendency, the revolutionary organisation
faces a contradiction in its relationship to¬
other workers (of course, if it isn’t part
of the class then like some political groups
it tends towards elitism, vanguardism,
divorce from class reality. Theory and
practice must be rooted in concrete
conditions.).

There are dangers in these
contradictions and the revolutionary
anarchist must realise this-not only
realise, but derive a practice from it. This
contradiction cannot be completely
removed until the triumph of a
libertarian communist society.

TASKS OF THE ORGANISATION

In understanding that the revolution
must be made by the self-activity of the
working class, and recognising the above
contradictions, the anarchist revolutionary
organisation has a number of tasks to
perform.

It must act as a propaganda grouping,
ceaselessly and untiringly putting over the
message that the working class must take
power; the ways in which this can be
done, ideas of libertarian organisation
and examples of self-activity by workers.

It must search out and recall the
history of past struggles, the successes
and mistakes of these struggles, and must
impart the lessons to be learnt to as many
members of the class as it can reach.
Working class history is deliberately
obscured and excluded from the books
by the ruling class. The revolutionary
organisation has to rediscover these
struggles in its efforts to develop class
consciousness.

Whenever important developments
(e.g. the Up occupation at Besancon in
Southern France) occur inside the class,
the revolutionary organisation must
spread the news through its links with
organisations in other countries. The
revolutionary organisation is
internationalist; it seeks links with other

The

tyranny

of

sTRuCTurEleSSneSS

by

Jo Freeman 5p

In this pamphlet Jo Freeman attempts to
sketch out an approach to organisation that
would prevent the growth of elitist
leaderships-which both highly
centralised and highly informal groupings
tend to produce.
In revulsion from the tyrannical structures of
governments, unions and other organisations
some anarchists have shied away from
any meaningful consideration
of self-organisation.
The Anarchist Workers Association played
no part in the writing of this pamphlet
but has found it highly applicable to the
ineffectuality of anarchism in Britain
in recent decades.

Send 5p + 7p p&p to AWA, 13 Coltman Street, Hull, Humberside for a
copy. 10 or more 3*/&p each. Please make cheques/POs payable to:
'AWA General Fund’.

groupings in order to increase class
effectiveness.

But the organisation cannot see itself
as solely a pedagogic group, e.g. Solidarity
in this country. Above all, it is an
assembly of activists. It must actively
work in all the base organs of the class,
rank and file groups, tenants associations,
squatters associations, unemployed groups,
womens and gay groups. It works inside
the trade unions to build a strong rank
and file movement. It rejects the notions
of transforming the unions into
revolutionary unions, because their top
structure has been integrated into
capitalism and acts as a mechanism to
control the workers. It seeks to build
links between unionised and
non-unionised workers in the struggle for
a movement at the base.

The organisation works inside the
womens and gay groups, and sexual
politics groups to radicalise and cause a
break with liberalism, reformism and
Leninism. It seeks to bring a recognition
of the essential interconnection of sexual
and class oppression. There can be no
successful and complete sexual revolution
without the triumph of the working class
and the end of hierarchical society.

The organisation works for full
democracy inside all these groupings and
inside the class as a whole for self-activity,
for the self-management by working
people of every struggle and every facet
of life. Only by building democratic
organisations in the course of struggle
can the proletariat hope to reach
libertarian communism.

THE LIBERTARIAN FRONT

The anarchist organisation realises that
the social revolution cannot be won
without a struggle at the point of
production and the siezure of the means
of production. However, it does not
relegate the struggles in other areas of
life (unemployed, sexual, environmental
and ecological, cultural) to a secondary
role. All these struggles are implicitly
anti-capitalist, and all these issues are
closely entwined. The questioning of one
facet of capitalism can lead to the total
rejection of the system. The militants of
the organisation involved in these groups
must seek to pinpoint in what ways the
class system causes and/or perpetuates
the problems that these groups are
confronting.

It is vitally important that a
‘libertarian front’ of all these groups is
built. Thus revolutionary work consists
in part, of linking each area of struggle,
bringing out all the latent anti-capitalist
and libertarian tendencies to be found
there.

Revolutionary anarchist militants seek
a regroupment of all those who have

‘globalised’ their struggle, i.e. developed
from fighting on one front against
capitalism to a total critique.

This radical regroupment “the
libertarian front” has to be striven for by
the revolutionary organisation, and
reflected in all its activities and
publications. It must act as the driving
force of such a grouping, constantly
drawing in radicalised elements and
hoping to build a mass movement.

When we say “driving force” we don’t
mean the Leninist approach of seeking
to dominate such a movement by
capturing positions etc.. We seek to
minimise the dangers of the
organisational contradiction and thus ^
seek an intimate relationship with the
mass movement. We don’t want to take
. over such a movement.

What counts is not so much the
\ numerical increase of the organisation but
\ its development of the whole working
J class movement. We see our organisation
as a means of communication and a
weapon to be used by the working class.

THE LEADERSHIP OF IDEAS

In opposition to the Leninist ideas of
leadership, the anarchist organisation
fights for the “leadership of ideas within
the class, through example and suggestion.
This entails a clearer understanding of
hierarchical society, the concept of
self-managed struggle, and of Leninism.

In the struggle against Leninism and
all forms of elitism, comes the realisation
that a struggle of ideas must be waged at
base level. This realisation is reflected in
revolutionary anarchist theory and
practice- the call for mandation of
delegates, for mass decision making, for
mass action.

THE COMPOSITION OF THE

REVOLUTIONARY

ORGANISATION

All sections of the working class who
recognise the implications of struggle
against capitalism and who subscribe to
the libertarian communist project, will be
united inside the organisation.

Elements of other classes and strata
who see the need for the victory of the
working class will also be gathered inside
the organisation. Blue collar and white
collar workers, elements of the working
intelligentsia and scientific strata will
work together in the realisation of the
revolution. The anti-intellectual has a
role to play in helping clarify positions
inside the organisation, but s/he should
never have a privileged position inside the
organisation. In fact, the practicality of
working people very often outstrips the
intellectual in the grasp of theory and
practice.

The revolution needs the impetus of a
strong desciplined anarchist grouping to
push it to its furthest possibilities.
Precisely because of the absence of such
a body, the instrument of revolutionary
workers, past revolutions have fallen
back. (We take into account all the other
factors that have impeded the full
realisation of the revolution.)

The revolutionary impetus must be
strong enough to sweep the so-called
‘vanguards’ aside. In opposition to the
‘vanguard’ parties, the anarchist
organisation should see itself as the
‘guard-dog’ of the revolution.

The revolutionary organisation will
fight in the newly created workplace and
r neighbourhood councils on an
ideological level against authoritarian
groups. If the Leninists use force to
destroy the workers gains, then the
anarchist organisation must be fully
prepared to combat them on a physical
level, and to help other workers prepare
for this eventuality. If they prove a threat
to the revolution, the left ‘leaderships'
must be suppressed. It follows on from
this that in the revolutionary period the
anarchist organisation must call for and
assist in the arming of all working people,
for defence against all their enemies,
capitalist and state capitalist, and the
creation of workers' militia units under
the control of the councils.

As the revolution advances, the
relationship of the organisation to the
class develops. A new level of unity is
reached because the organisation grows
as wide sections of workers see its
perspectives as the way to a new and just
society.

In the transitional period, the sruggle
against authoritarian groups and values
becomes easier as they disintegrate.
(Unless new ruling groups emerge in
which case a new confrontation breaks
out.)

It can be seen from this that the
anarchist organisation docs not dissolve
itself immediately after the initial
insurrectionary phase of the revolution.

It must continue to grow, in order to aid
the class towards libertarian communism.
As this ideal becomes more and more
possible, and obstacles to its achievement
fall away, the organisation at the same
time becomes more open and eventually
disappears completely. (Unlike in Spain
during the Civil War. the organisation
remains principled and tight during the
actual revolutionary crisis.)

The anarchist organisation shoulu see
itself in the future period as a tendency in
the council movement advocating
maximum democracy, and it should be
prepared to exist with other tendencies,
as only be a constant debate in the class
can correct decisions be reached.

NICK HEATH

7

Communism, to many people, is a dirty wot a. For much of
this century, communism has been associated with Russia, a
country which, in fact, has as its social system, not communism
or socialism, but a particularly vicious and totalitarian form of
State capitalism. Genuine socialists and libertarian communists
have had an unenviable task of demonstrating that neither
communism nor socialism exists - or has ever existed — in such
countries as Russia, Cuba or even Yugoslavia. They have also
had to explain that communism, in a primitive form, has indeed
existed, as a form of society, for much of Humanity’s existence
on this planet, for perhaps two or more million years.

Since the demise of Primitive Communism, and the advent of
private-property society, Fust of Chattel Slavery, then of
Feudalism and, lastly, of Capitalism, “pockets” of peasant-
communism, have persisted up until present times. Small
communistic communities have been established, often by
bourgeois and petit-bourgeois “intellectuals”, with varying
degrees of success. But throughout the centuries, the idea of
communism, usually in an utopian or backward-looking form,
has been advocated - and sometimes acted upon - by small
idealistic sects. It was not until the middle of the last century,
however, that individuals and political groups began to advocate
communism as a new, advanced, type of society which should,
indeed, would, take the place of capitalism; which would be a
“higher” form of society; would be in the interest of the whole
of the people, and not just a small class as is capitalism and,
most importantly, would have to be brought about by the
majority of the population — the workers — through a social
revolution. Some of the modem advocates of communism,
particularly in the earlier decades of the last century, have been
dubbed “utopian” communists; others following Marx and
Engels, have at least called themselves “scientific” communists
and socialists, but have been accused of, in fact, being
“authoritarian communists” by their anarchist opponents who,
in many instances, began to advocate a form of
non-authoritarian socialism or collectivism which, later,
emerged as Libertarian Communism.

Briefly. I shall discuss, first, the system of Primitive Communism
and then the ideas and theories of Utopian Communism,
Authoritarian Communism and, lastly. Libertarian Communism
as advocated by the more working-class elements within the
so-called Anarchist Movement. Some non-anarchist groups also
propagate libertarian communism as their objective. Their ideas
are mainly based upon those of Morris.

PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM

Rousseau’s Noble Savage was largely a figment of his own
imagination; nevertheless, the popular conception of the
primitive male savage beating “his” wife’s brains out with a
club is equally false. The savage was neither violent nor
competitive.

The basic characteristics of savagery was dependence upon
“wild” sources of food supply, with all the disadvantages that
this implies. Primitive people often suffered from malnutrition
and the fear of starvation. Communities were small. Only at
certain periods of the year was food plentiful. Such form of
existence, however, gave rise to an embryonic, rudimentary,
ethical code. “Private property”, writes Grahame Clark in his
From Savagery to Civilisation, “is limited to such things as
weapons, digging sticks, collecting bags and personal trinkets,
although in dividing meat, for example, the share of each
individual is as a rule socially defined. Communal rights are
generally recognized to extend over all the territories required
to provide food for the group, territories within which all the
seasonal wanderings are confined, and the limits of which are
known to neighbouring groups.” Of primitive communist,
savage, society Peter Kropotkin observes: “Within the tribe

8

From Pri:
Libertarian

everything is shared in common; every morsel of food is
divided among all present; and if the savage is alone in the
woods, he does not begin eating before he has loudly shouted
thrice an invitatiqn to any one who may hear his voice to share
his meal”. “In short’\continues Kropotkin, “within the tribe
the rule of ‘each for all’ is supreme, so long as the separate
family has not yet broken up the tribal unity.” {Mutual Aid).

The Biblical concept of “mine and thine” had not yet emerged.

Of Primitive Communism, Paul Lafargue in his Evolution of
•Property from Savagery to Civilisation comments:

“If the savage is incapable of conceiving the idea of individual
possession of objects not incorporated with his person, it is
because he has no conception of his individuality as distinct
from the consanguine group in which he lives. The savage is
envirorened by such perpetual material danger, and compassed
round with such constant imaginary terrors, that he cannot
exist in a state of isolation; he cannot even form a notion of
the possibility of such a thing. To expel a savage from his clan,
from his horde, is tantamount to condemning him to death;. .

To be divided from his companions, to live alone, seemed a
fearful thing to primeval man, accustomed to live in troops . . .
Hunting and fishing, those primitive modes of production, are
practiced jointly, and the produce is shared in common..

When savages no longer lead a nomadic existence, and begin to
build a permanent or semi-permanent dwelling-house, the house
is generally not a private one as we understand it, but a
common one. In such houses, provisions are held in common.

Of a somewhat later period (the lower status of barbarism
among some American aborigines), Lewis H. Morgan observes:

“The syndasmian family was special and peculiar. Several of
them were usually found in one house, forming a communal
household, in which the principle of communism in living is
practiced”. {Ancient Society ). Morgan mentions the Iroquois,
with whom he lived, in particular. Later, with the emergence of
the patriarchal family, households become the possession of
single families. Nevertheless, throughout this period, land
continues to be held in common.

But, continues Lafargue, “Very gradually did the idea of
private property, which is so ingrained in and appears so
natural to the philistine, dawn upon the human mind.”
Humanity underwent a long and painful process of develop¬
ment before arriving at private property in land. Indeed, the
earliest distribution of the land was into pastures and
territories of chase common to the tribe. The development of
agriculture was a determining cause of the parcelling of common
lands, often into small strips, sometimes on a permanent, but
usually on an annual, basis. Lafargue notes that generally
“landed property on its first establishment among primitive
nations, was allotted to women”. And regarding women within
primitive communism, Frederick Engels wrote: “Communistic
housekeeping, however, means the supremacy of women in the
house; just as the exclusive recognition of the female parent,
owing to the impossibility of recognising the male parent with

i

nitive to

Communism

certainty, means that the women, ie the mothers, are held in
high respect. One of the most absurd notions taken over from
Eighteenth-century enlightenment is that in the beginning of
society woman was the slave of man. Among all savages and all
barbarians of the lower and middle stages, and to a certain
extent of the upper stage also, the position of women is not
only free, but honourable”. ( Origin of the Family, Private
Property and the State). And Lafargue observes that “Landed
property, which was ultimately to constitute for its owner a
means of emancipation and of social supremacy was, at its
origin, a cause of subjection; the women were condemned to
rude labour in the fields, from which they were emancipated
only by the introduction of servile labour. Agriculture, which
led to private property in land, introduced the servile labour
which in the course of centuries has borne the names of
slave-labour, bond-labour and wage-labour”.

( In sum, writes Engels, “At all earlier stages of society
production was essentially collective, just as consumption
proceeded by direct distribution of the products within larger
or smaller communistic communities. This collective production
was very limited; but inherent in it was the producers’ control
over their process of production and their product. They knew
what became of their product; they consumed it; it did not
leave their hands. And so long as production remains on this
basis, it cannot grow above the heads of the producers, nor
raise up incorporeal alien powers against them, as in civilisation
is always the case.”

Thus, in brief, was what has been called Primitive Communism.

UTOPIAN COMMUNISM

It is, in this short essay, impossible to chronicle all, or even
most, of the utopian movements and revolts which included
communistic elements and tendencies. Suffice it that we
mention one or two. Utopian or backward-looking communist
currents can be traced as far back as the great slave revolt of
71 BC. Spartacus is reported as saying: “Whatever we take, we
hold in common, and no man shall own anything but his
weapons and his clothes. It will be the way it was in the old
times”. ( Spartacus , by Howard Fast).

Class hatred and an utopian form of communism was practiced
by many of the early Christians, most of whom were, in the
early days of that religion, plebians or former slaves. The Acts
of the Apostles confirmed that “...all had things in common”.
And in the eleventh homily (sermon) of the Acts, one reads:
“Grace was among them, since nobody suffered want, that is
since they gave willingly that no one remained poor. For they
did not give a part, keeping part for themselves; they gave
everything in their possession. They did away with inequality
and lived in great abundance...What a man needed was taken
from the treasure of the community not from the private
property of individuals. Thereby the givers did not become
arrogant...All gave all that they have into a common fund...”
In his Foundations of Christianity , Karl Kautsky comments

that in the Gospel of St. John, the communistic life of Jesus
and the apostles it taken for granted. Such communism,
however, was mainly a communism of consumption. The
Jewish Essenes also practiced a similar form of communism.
Christian communism soon declined and disappeared. “Accep¬
tance of slavery, along with increasing restriction of the
community of property to common meals, were not the only
limitations the Christian community encountered in its efforts
to put its communistic tendencies into effect”, writes Kautsky.
Rich sympathisers joined the Church. Money became more
important. Concessions were made; and rich men found that
they could enter the Kingdom of Heaven-at a price! In sum,
says Kautsky, “It was the Christian community, not Christian
communism, to which the Roman emperors finally bowed.
The victory of Christianity did not denote the dictatorship of
the proletariat, but the dictatorship of the gentlemen who had
grown big in their community. The champions and martyrs of
the early communities, who had devoted their possessions,
their labour, th£lr lives for the salvation of the poor and
miserable, had only laid the groundwork for a new kind of
subjection and exploitation”. Nevertheless, the ideas and ideals
of communism did not completely die. Even within the
Christian Church.

Communism is occasionally mentioned during what historians
have called the Middle Ages. It is sometimes referred to as
“agrarian communism”; but as Frank Ridley points out in his
The Revolutionary Tradition in England, “The communism of
the Middle Ages was essentially and necessarily a religious
communism: it took the form of religious heresies in both East
and West...it was one of the major forces making for social
revolution throughout the entire mediaeval era. Its untiring
propagandists were the underground religious heresies, from
that little-known subterranean world which was always
smouldering beneath the surface of mediaeval society." This
communism was, of course, from the nature of the times, an
agrarian communism of consumption, and not an industrial
communism of production as in modern times. It was also a
religious, and as such, a backward-looking communism. What
else could it have been? For that matter, all communism and
every revolution that had communism for ita aim prior to the
Industrial Revolution, looked to the past for its models. Of
particular interest, however, is the communism of John Ball
and the peasants who took part in the great revolt of 1381

This is not the place to go into the causes of the revolt. They
include the Hundred Years War, the shortage of peasant labour
due to the Black Death, the terrible miseries of many of the
peasants and the religious-agrarian communist propaganda of
the Lollards.

Prior to the great revolt, a hedge-priest, whose “base” was in
Colchester, by the name of John Ball, roamed the countryside,
speaking to people wherever they gathered. Ball was probably
the world’s first communist “agitator”. His text was a little
jingle: “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the
gentleman?”. After his release from Rochester prison. Ball
spoke to an enormous audience of peasants on Blackheath, on
June 12th 1381. His exact speech is not known, but Charles
Poulson in his English Episode , and William Morris in his A
Dream of John Ball, both give us a very good idea of what he
probably said.

Says Poulson's John Ball: “...In the beginning all men were
equal, all men were brothers. How is it that some can say ‘I am
nobler than you’? How is it that one man delves day-long in
the earth, and with all his labour has not enough to feed his
babes, and another takes the life from the poor and makes
from it a jewelled mantle for his back?...I say to you that in
spite of its fine pride and rich clothing, its white hands and
perfumes, Nobility is evil... And in truth it is time to cry enough.
I see you here before me, my brothers, and not one of you but

9

has lived his life toiling, from the first sun-up till the last rays
fade. And you are clothed in rags. The corn and the cattle grow
great in your care, but there is little fat on you. A handful of
beans is your pottage. All that you grow, all that you make
and build, is taken. This in fines, this in dues, this in labour.
The noble master drains your blood like a vampire. Would
there not be plenty and happiness but for what is taken? So I
say, my brothers, let us feed our children before their lordships.
Let us make an end to this thieving.”

And, according to William Morris, John Ball spoke thus:

“...too many rich men there are in this realm; and yet if there
were but one, there would be one too many, for all should be
his thralls...And how shall it be when these (masters) are gone,
what else shall ye lack when ye lack masters? Ye shall not lack
for fields ye have tilled, nor the houses ye have built, nor the
cloth ye have woven; all these shall be yours, and whatso ye
will of all that the earth beareth; and he that soweth shall reap
and the reaper shall eat in fellowship... then shall no man mow
the deep grass for another...”

On other occasions, John Ball remarked that “things cannot
go well in England, nor ever will, until everything shall be in
common”. (See A People’s History of England, by A.L.Morton.
Similar views were expressed elsewhere in Europe, particularly
among the French Jacquerie about forty years before. In
England they became largely dormant for centuries. It is to
the “Great RebeIlion”-the English Revolution-of the seven¬
teenth century that we must look next for communistic ideas
and experiments.

Utopian communist ideas found champions among the Levellers;
but, as yet, communism made no appeal among the people of
the towns and cities, which did not possess an industrial
proletariat. In his Cromwell and Communism, Eduard Bernstein
remarks: “At the most, communistic proposals might have
attracted the rural workers at certain times. In fact, there is no
instance during the Great Rebellion of an independent class
movement of the town workers, although during the zenithof
the movement there were several attempts at agrarian communist
risings”.

An associate of John Libume, by the name of William Walwyn,
attacked “the inequality of the distribution of the things of
this life”; and claimed, like John Ball before him, that “the
world shall never be well until all things be common”. And
against objections to communism, he commented: “There
would then be less need for Government; for then there would
be no thieves, no covetous persons, no deceiving and abuse of
one another, and so no need of Government.” William Walwyn
would appear to have been Britain's first anarchist-communist!
There were others who advocated somewhat similar ideas,
often with quotations from the Bible.

And there were also others who attempted to put their ideas
into practice. Among them were the “True Levellers”, as they
called themselves; or “diggers”, as their contempories dubbed
them.

On Sunday, April 8th, 1649, there suddenly appeared near
Cobham in Surrey, a group of men, armed with spades, who
started to dig up uncultivated land at the side of St. George’s
Hill. Their intention was to grow com and other produce on it.
They explained to the local country-folk that their numbers
were, as yet, few but would soon increase to 4,000. They
proposed that “the common people ought to dig, plow, plant,
and dwell upon the Commons without hiring them, or paying
any rent”. After they had erected tents, worked the land and

10

prepared to dig on a second hill, also for sowing, (their
numbers had increased to about fifty), they were attacked by
troops and many were arrested. Winstanley, their leader, was
brought before General Fairfax. None of the “diggers” were
prepared to defend themselves by force, however. Most were
heavily fined. Later, they attempted again to take over common
lands, but were again arrested-and fined. They also published
pamphlets, some of which were “couched in somewhat mystical \

phraseology, which”, says Bernstein, “serves as a cloak to
conceal the revolutionary designs of the authors”. One such
pamphlet argued that “In the beginning of time the Creator
Reason made the earth to be common treasury.” They also
composed a ^Digger’s Song' in a similar vein.

In 1651, Gerrard Winstanley wrote his The Law of Freedom
on a platform-in which he said:

“Is not buying ancj- selling a righteous law? No, it is the law of
the conqueror, but not righteous law of creation: how can
that be righteous which is a cheat?...When mankind began to
buy and sell, then did he fall from his innocency; for then he
began to oppress and cozen one another of their creation
birthright.”

He continues that, though Crown and Church lands should be
for common use, they were being sold to land-grabbing army
officers and speculators of all kinds. He says that there should
be neither poor nor rich; that there should be no inequality;
that the “earth and storehouses be common”; that there
should be no buying or selling, and, lastly, no need for any
lawyers. Winstanley was not, however, opposed to organisation.

“All officers in a true Magistrace of the Commonwealth are to
be chosen officers. All officers in a Commonwealth are to be
chosen new ones every year ".“When publique officers remain
long”, he contended, “they degenerate”. Indeed, the ‘True
Levellers” had quite a platform of “articles” and “clauses”!
Utopians, the Levellers and True Levellers may have been, but
at least their ideas and organisation was, indeed, more advanced
and practical than some of our own “modem” anarchists!
Moreover, far from all the utopian communists of the period
were pacifists. Within the Cromwellian army, there were a
number of rebellions from 1647 onwards. Unfortunately, the
movements of the period seem to have evolved or degenerated
into Quakerism, and relative repectability.

MARXISM

The society of the early savage was Primitive Communism. But
a few thousand years ago, with the cultivation of the soil and
the subsequent production of a surplus, class divisions became
apparent. Warfare became organised; a repressive State emerged
and prisoners were taken captive. They were, more often than
not, made to toil in the fields or build temples and pyramids
for their new masters. Hence the slave empires of antiquity.
Wealth tended to accumulate in the hands of a few wealthy
people. The fall of the last of the slave empires—that of the
decadent Roman Empire-marked the dawn of a new era.
About a thousand years ago, in what we call Europe and
elsewhere, a new form of private property society, and a new
form of slavery for the many, gradually emerged. It has been
called feudalism. The slave became the serf. His master owned
the land; and the serf toiled on his lord’s land, producing
wealth for him, and in return he was allowed to work upon
tiny strips of land for himself. The wealth he, thus, produced [
was generally just enough for him to live on. “It had taken
several thousands of years of chattel slavery to prepare the
way for serfdom. And it took several centuries of feudalism to . I
prepare the way for a new form of society—capitalism—the
kernel of which already existed in the feudal society.” ( Socialist
Manifesto, S.P. of C.).

J

The wealth and power of the townsmen, or at least a section
of them, increased and that of the landowning nobility
declined. The nobleman became a complete parasite upon
society. Society’s new masters-after many struggles and
setbacks, as well as revolutions-became the burghers or, as
they were later called, the bourgeosie. Trade and commerce
increased. “Once freed from the fetters of feudalism, the
onward march of capitalism became a mad, headlong rush .
Everywhere mills, factories, and furnaces sprang up. Their
smoke and fumes turned fields once fertile and populous into
desolate, uninhabitable wastes; their refuse poisoned and
polluted the rivers until they stank to Heaven...” (Socialist
Manifesto).

A new condition of slavery replaced serfdom. Socialists, both
Marxist and non-Marxist,_called, and still call, it “wage-slavery”
Former serfs and, quite often, free peasants, were driven from
the land and herded into the towns, where they were forced
(otherwise they would have starved—and often did!) to work
in the mills and mines, and the factories, of their new masters,
the bourgeosie, the owners of capital-the capitalists. The
workers created, as did the slaves and serfs, a surplus for their
masters, over and above what was needed to keep them more
or less in working order. Capitalism, as a society, is based upon
wage-labour and capital.

With the development of capitalism, economists and others,
including social reformers and utopian socialist “intellectuals”
began to analyse the new and developing society. A new body
of ideas began to emerge as to the nature of capitalism. In the
main, from about 1844 onwards, they have been associated
with two Germans, who, for many years lived in England, the
then most advanced capitalist country. They were Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels-though both admitted their debt to
earlier economists and philosophers. Nevertheless, both Marx
and Engels were particularly scathing in their attacks on what
they considered to be “unscientific” socialists and communists
as well as those whom called themselves “True Socialists”.
However, in 1845, Engels was still influenced by utopian
communist ideas. In the penultimate paragraph of his The
Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 he asserts
that “communism stands, in principle, above the breach
between bourgeoisie and proletariat...Communism is a question
of humanity and not of the workers alone...And as Communism
stands above the strife between bourgeoisie and proletariat it
will be easier for the better elements of the bourgeoisie...to
unite with it...” But by 1847, when he drafted Principles of
Communism (that is the first draft of the famous Communist
Manifesto by Marx and Engels), Engels begins by saying that
“Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of liberation of
the proletariat”. Incidentally, Engels in his Principles of
Communism says that the workers are propertyless and are
obliged to sell their labour to the bourgeoisie; later, after Marx
had studied the capitalist mode of production, he asserted that
the workers did not sell their labour, but their labour-power,
their abilities to work.

In 1845, Marx wrote his German Ideology, in which he deals
with and attacks the idealistic thinkers of Germany and, in the
second part of the book, such ‘True” socialists and utopian
communists as Saint-Simon, Fourier and Proudhon. He also
attacks Proudhon in his Poverty of Philosophy. However, the
first great “classic” of “scientific” or what, later on, has been
called authoritarian, communism was, of course, the Comm¬
unist Manifesto. In the main, it has remained so; though
Engels writes in his 1872 Preface that parts of the program
had “in some details become antiquated”.

The Communist Manifesto begins by asserting that “A spectre

is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism”. The history
of all hitherto existing (recorded) society, it proclaims, is the
history of class struggles. But our society - capitalism - has
simplified class antagonisms. “All society is more or less
splitting up into two opposing camps, into two great hostile
classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat”, says the Manifesto.
(I quote from the SLP, that is the De Leonist version, though
I have four or five different versions and translations, all more
or less the same). Marx and Engels, in the Communist
Manifesto (which saw the light of day in 1848) openly break
with the Utopians and the “True” socialists in advocating that
it will be the proletarians-albeit through a Communist Party
-who must overthrow bourgeois society. Says the Manifesto
“All previous historical movements were the movements of
minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian
movement is the conscious movement of the immense majority
in the interest qf the immense majority”. This is, indeed,
worth remembering as, many so-called latter-day Marxists and
all Leninists plug the “vanguard party” line. Marx and Engels
emphasise that the workers have no country. They are, to all
intents and purposes, propertyless. It is worth noting that, in
1848, and more or less throughout their lives, Marx and Engels
combine their propaganda for communism with a list of
reforms. Like many others, they felt that one could advocate
both the abolition of bourgeois society and reforms of that
society at one and the same time! The Manifesto, therefore,
calls for, among other things, a heavy progressive income tax,
abolition of inheritance, confiscation of the property of
emigrants and rebels, centralisation of credit in the hands of
the State, centralisation of the means of transportation in the
hands of the State, organisation of industrial armies and free
public education. In other words: state-capitalism!

Their vision of communism of the future, is summed up thus:

“When in the course of development class distinctions have
disappeared, and all production is concentrated in the hands
of associated individuals, the public power will lose its political
character. Political power, properly speaking, is the organised
power of one class for the purpose of oppressing another. If
the proletariat, forced in its struggle against the bourgeoisie to
organise as a class, makes itself by a revolution the ruling class,
and as the ruling class destroys by force the old conditions of
production. It destroys along with these conditions of
production the conditions of existence of class antagonism,
classes in general, and, therewith, its own domination as a
class.

In the j)lace of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and
class antagonisms, an association appears in which the free
development of each is the condition for the free development
of all”.

The Communist Manifesto ends with the now famous:
“Workers of all Lands, Unite!”

In his paper addressed to the General Council of the First
International (later published as Value, Price and Profit and
not Wages, Price and Profit, as has been stated on occasions,
particularly in Russia), Marx calls on the working class to
abolish the wages system, though as an ultimate, not immediate,
aim. This was in 1865. Ten years later, in his Critique of the
Gotha Program, Marx elaborates on what he considers a
communist society would be like. Like the Communist
Manifesto, the Critique of the Gotha Program, is readily
available, and should be read by anarchists and libertarian
communists. I will, therefore, only quote the main points
from the third section. (I use the Workers’ Literature Bureau
version, published in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946. The other

11

editions are much the same, whether they be the Russian, De
Leonist or Lawrence and Wishart editions). Says Marx:

“Within the co-operative society, based on the common
ownership of the means of production, the producers do hot
exchange their products...What we are dealing with here is a
Communist society, not as it has developed on its own basis,
but, on the contrary, as it is just issuing out of capitalist society.
Hence a society that still retains, in every respect, economic ,
moral and intellectual, the birthmarks of the old society from
whose womb it is issuing”. Here, Marx argues that the producer
gets back exactly as much as he gives; he receives a community
cheque showing that he has done so much labour. “Equal
right is here, therefore, still according to the principle,
capitalist right...”. It is still tainted with “a capitalist limitation
It is, therefore, says Marx, “a right of inequality”. Nevertheless
he argues, “these shortcomings are unavoidable in the first
phase of Communist society”. But-and here we come to the
alPimportant and well-known passage of the Critique of the
Gotha Program-"' In the higher phase of Communist society,
after the enslaving subordination of the individual under the
division of labour has disappeared, and therewith also the
opposition between manual and intellectual labour; after
labour has become not only a means of life, but also the
highest want of life; when the development of all the faculties
of the individual, the productive forces have correspondingly
increased, and all the springs of social wealth flow more
abundantly-only then may the limited horizon of capitalist
right be left behind entirely, and society inscribe on its banners
‘From everyone according to his faculties, to everyone
according to his needs!’

In Section Two of the Critique, Marx asks the question: “What
then is the change which the institution of the State will
undergo in a communist society?”. And his answer is:
“Between the capitalist and communist systems of society lies
the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into
the other. This corresponds to a political transition period,
whose State can be nothing else but the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat”. Nowhere in this stage in
Marx’s thinking does he seem to envisage ant sort of dying
out or ‘withering away’ of the State. For such ideas, we have
to look-at a somewhat later date- to Engels.

Engels’ most important works on the subject of communism/
socialism are his Anti-Duhring, first published in 1878, and his
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, first
published in 1884. Part of Anti-Duhring has appeared as
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, a work much admired by
groups such as the SPGB in this country. In Part Three of
Anti-Duhring, Engels first discusses Robert Owen’s communist
theories and colonies as well as the ideas of Saint-Simon and
Fourier. Such people, Engels dubs as Utopians; but remarks
that “The Utopians...were Utopians because they could be
nothing else at a time when capitalist production was as yet so
little developed”. After analysing bourgeois society in the
same, but somewhat clearer, manner as did Marx, Engels then
outlines what has remained the ‘classic’ Marxist method of
bringing socialism about.

“The proletariat seizes the State power, and transforms the
means of production in the first instant into State property.
But in doing this, it puts an end to itself as the proletariat; it
puts an end to all class differences and class antagonisms, it
puts an end to the State as the State.” And “When ultimately
it (the State) becomes really representative of society as a
whole, it makes itself superfluous. As soon as there is no
longer any class of society to be held in subjection; as soon as

-along with class domination and the struggle for individual
existence based on the former anarchy (sic!) of production,
the collisions and excesses arising from these have also been
abolished-there is nothing more to be repressed that would
take a special repressive force, a State necessary. The first act
in which the State really comes forward as the representative
of society as a whole-the taking possession of the means of
production in the name of society-is at the same time its last
independent act as a State...The government of persons is
replaced by the administration of things and the direction ofi
the processes of production. The State is not ‘abolished’, it
withers away.” In the Socialism: Utopian and Scientific version
it says: “It dies out”. In his section on production, Engels
argues that production must be revolutionised from “top to
bottom”; productive labour will become a pleasure, not a
burden; production, utilising modem industry, will be on the
basis of “one single vast plan”; and there will also be the
abolition of the separation between town and country, as well
as the old division of labour.

In his Origin of the State, Engels argues that the proletariat
must constitute its own Party and vote for its own represent¬
atives to Parliament. “Universal suffrage”, he says, “is thus the
gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never
will be anything more; but that is enough”. Of the State, he
contends that it has not existed from all eternity. Societies
have managed without it. The State will inevitably fall. In fact,
he says, “The society which organises production anew on the
basis of free and equal association of the producers will put
the whole State machinery where it will then belong-into the
museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the
bronze axe”.

Before leaving the Marxian view of communism/socialism, I
think it is worth mentioning that Marx and Engels envisioned
a quite authoritarian state of affairs within such a society, at
least in the early days. In his essay on Authority, Engels writes:

“Authority . . . means the imposition of the will of another
upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subord¬
ination. Now, since these two words sound bad and the
relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subord¬
inated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any
way of dispensing with it, whether-given the conditions of
present-day society—we could not create another social system,
in which this authority would be given no scope any longer
and would consequently have to disappear. .. .

. . . Everywhere combined action . . . displaces independent
action by individuals; now, is it possible to have organisation
without authority?

Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who
now exercises authority over the production and circulation of
wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the view of the anti¬
authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had
become the collective property of the workers who use them.
Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed
its form?”

Engels then instances a factory, a large cotton mill. He says:

. . particular questions arise in each room and at every
moment concerning the mode of distribution, production of
materials, etc., which must be settled at once at pain of seeing
production immediately stopped; whether they are settled by
decision of a delegate placed at the head of branch of labour
or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single
individual will always be subordinate itself, which means that

12

questions are settled in an authoritarian manner”.

.Engels’ conclusions regarding the ‘ delegation of function” are,
of course, open to debate; but in fact, he goes much further in
his praise of authority. He continues:

“But the necessity of authority, and of impervious authority
at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a
ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all
depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to
the will of one”.

Engels was, of course, wrong then, as he would be now! I have,
in fact, dealt with this in an article entitled Anarchy in the
Navy, in Anarchy 14, instancing the running of much of the
Spanish Republican Fleet by rank-and-file sailors during the
revolutionary period in 1936.

We will leave Engels to his “impervious authority”; though it
may not come amiss to mention here that, surprisingly, even
William Morris, who has always been considered something of a
libertarian socialist and a quasi-anarchist, also takes a similar
line to Engels regarding the running of a ship “in socialist
condition”, in his essay, Communism.

Lastly, I shall briefly turn to the libertarian or anarchist-
communist viewpoints, which in the last century were mainly
associated with two Russians-Michael Bakunin and Peter
Kropotkin, though others also espoused similar views.

LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM

Between 1842 and 1861. Bakunin could best be described as a
revolutionary pan-Slavist, though there are indications of
libertarian tendencies before 1861.1 would say, however, that
he could not really be called a libertarian or anarchist before
1866, when he wrote his Revolutionary Catechism.

In his Catechism, Bakunin argues that “freedom is the absolute
right of every adult man and woman” that “the freedom of
each is therefore realizable only in the equality of all”. He
asserts the absolute rejection of every authority, “including
that which sacrifices freedom for the convenience of the State”;
“order in society” he says, “must result from the greatest
possible realization of individual liberty, as well as of liberty
on all levels of social organisation”. He calls for the
“establishment of a commonwealth”, and the “abolition of
classes, ranks and privileges” and, rather surprising, “universal
suffrage”, though Max Nettlau says that he did not mean in the
State, but in the new society. Bakunin also calls for the abolition
of the “all-pervasive, regimented, centralised State”, and the
“internal reorganisation of each country on the basis of the
absolute freedom of individuals, of the productive associations
and of the communes”. Freedom can only be defended by
freedom, he says. “The basic unit of all political organisation
in each country must be the completely autonomous commune
constituted by the majority vote of all adults of both sexes. No
one shall have either the power or the right to interfere in the
internal life of the commune...” The nation, continues Bakunin,
must be nothing but a federation of autonomous provinces.
Without political equality there cwi be no real political liberty,
but political equality will be possible only when there is social
and economic equality. The majority, says Bakunin, live in
slavery. And “This slavery will last until capitalism is
overthrown by the collective action of the workers”. Therefore
the land, and all the natural resources, are (to be) the common
property of everyone...” He concludes his Catechism: “The
revolution, in short, has this aim: freedom for all, for

individuals as well as collective bodies, associations, communes,
provinces, regions, and nations, and the mutual guarantee of
this freedom by federation”.

Later, also in 1866, Bakunin wrote another Catechism on very
much the same lines, in which he again asserts that the land is
to be the common property of all; and that “The revolution
must be made not for, but by, the people, land can never
succeed if it does not enthusiastically involve all the masses
of the people; that is, in the rural countryside as well as the
cities.”

In his Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theolgism, Bakunin says
that socialism means “to organise society in such a manner
that every individual endowed with life, man or woman, may
find almost equal means for the development of his various
faculties ... to organise a society which, while it makes it
impossible for any individual whatsoever to exploit the labour
of others, will not allow 1 anyone to share in the enjoyment of
social wealth, always produced by labour only, unless he has
himself contributed to its creation with his own labour”. He
thinks that the complete solution — to the problems thrown
up by capitalism - “will no doubt be the work of centuries”.
Nevertheless, “history has set the problem before us, and we
can no longer evade it if we are not to resign ourselves to
total impotence”.

Bakunin, again and again, asserts that the people must make
the revolution themselves, that the State must go first: that
society must be “organised from the bottom up by revolution¬
ary delegations . . .”: that the “revolutionary alliance” of the
people must exclude any form of dictatorship. But. at least
in 1869, Bakunin argued that a well-organised revolutionary
“Society” can assist “at the birth of the revolution by spreading
among the masses ideas which give expression to their instincts,
and to organise, not any army of the revolution - the people
alone should always be that army - but a sort of revolutionary
general staff, composed of dedicated, energetic, intelligent
individuals, sincere friends of the people above all . . . capable
of serving as intermediaries between the revolutionary idea
and the instincts of the people”. There need not,says Bakunin,
be a great number of such people. Two or three hundred, he
suggests, for the organisation in the largest countries. What
our British “traditional” anarchists - who it would seem are
not traditionalists, or at least Bakuninists - would say to
this idea 1 fear to think!

Bakunin was particularly critical of those whom he called the
“State Communists”. He was also scathing of those whom he
considered wished to impose communism or. as he sometimes
called it, collectivism, on the peasants. These he considered to
be Jacobins. Bakunin and Marx were, of course, antagonists.
This was partly personal and partly political. In his Letter to
La Liberte, Bakunin attacks Marx, saying that the popes had,
at least, an excuse for considering that they possessed “absolute
truth”: but “Mr. Marx has no such excuse”. In Bakunin's view,
“the policy of the proletariat, necessarily revolutionary, should
have the destruction of the State for its immediate goal”. But
Bakunin could not understand how Marx and the Marxists
wished to preserve, or use the State, as an instrument of
emancipation. “State means domination, and any domination
presupposes the subjection of the masses and, consequently,
their exploitation for the benefit of some ruling minority”,
asserts Bakunin against Marx. “The Marxists profess quite
contrary ideas,” argues Bakunin. “Between the Marxists and
ourselves there is an abyss. They are the governmentalists; we
are the anarchists in spite of it all”, he says.

Basically, then, this was the great argument between Bakunin

13

and Marx; it is still the argument between revolutionary
anarchists and Marxists; between authoritarian communists
and libertarian communists.

(Note: All quotations from Bakunin are taken from Bakunin
on Anarchy , edited by Sam Dolgoff. Much the same material
can also be gleaned from Bakunin , edited by Maximoff.)

Of Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin writes: “Bakunin was at heart a
Communist; but, in common with his Federalist comrades of
the International, and as a concession to the antagonism that
the authoritarian Communists had inspired in France, he
described himself as a ‘collectivist anarchist’. But, of course he
was not a ‘collectivist’ in the sense of Vidal or Pecqueur, or
their modern followers, who simply aim at State Capitalism.”
(Modern Science and Anarchism). Nevertheless, as early as
1869, a number of “Bakuninists” described themselves as
Communists.

Kropotkin, to a large degree, developed the ideas put forward,
often in a rather unscientific, uncoordinated, form, by Bakunin.
Before becoming an anarchist, Kropotkin had had a scientific
training and background. In his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, he
sees, as it were, a new form of society germinating within “the
civilized nations”; a society that must, one day, take the place
of the old one: a society of equals, “who will not be compelled
to sell their hands and brains to those who choose to employ
tham in a haphazard way, who will be able to apply their
knowledge and capacities to production, in an organism so
constructed as to combine all the efforts for procuring the
greatest sum possible of well-being for all, while free scope will
be left for every individual initiative”. Kropotkin says that
such a society will be composed of a multitude of associations,
federated for the purposes which require federation -
communes of production, communes of, and for, consumption,
all kinds of organisations, covering not just one country but
many. All of these will combine directly, be means of free
agreements between them. “There will be”, he says, “full
freedom for the development of new forms of production,

invention and organisation”. People will combine for all sorts
of work “in common”. The tendency towards uniformity and
centralization will be discouraged, remarks Kropotkin. Private
ownership and the wages system must go. There will be no
need of government, because of the free federation and “free
agreement” of organisations, which will take its place. And in
his Modem Science and Anarchism, Kropotkin particularly
attacks the “State Socialists”, who under the name of collec¬
tivism (we should say nationalisation today), advocated, not
communism or socialism, but State Capitalism. This, he says, is
nothing new; perhaps just an improved, but still undesirable,
form of the wage-system.

Kropotkin, in the same work, refers to “the coming social
revolution”,which is quite different from that of a Jacobin
dictatorship. And of such a revolution, he remarks: “During a
revolution new forms of life will always germinate on the ruin
of the old forms,M)ut no government will ever be able to find
their expression so loiig as these forms will not have taken a
definite shape during the work of reconstruction itself, which
must be going on in a thousand spots at the same time.” Such
was Kropotkin’s federalist — libertarian — communism and
socialism.

Since Bakunin and Kropotkin formulated their ideas of free,
federalist, anarchist, libertarian, communism, others have
followed and developed them. Malatesta popularised them;
and so did Alexander Berkman, particularly in What Is
Communist Anarchism. In 1926, Archinov, Makhno, Ida Mett
and others developed the ideas of libertarian, anarchist,
communism and organisation in their Organisational Platform
of the Libertarian Communists. I will not discuss the views of
Malatesta, Berkman and the “Platformists” here as, no doubt,
many of you are as, if not more, familiar with them as I am.
Naturally, the formulation of libertarian communist and
socialist ideas, and forms of organisation, will continue, in the
words of Kropotkin, “to germinate”. Let us hope so!

PETER E NEWELL February, 1976.

Reviews

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE
OF MARX by John Crump (published
jointly by Social Revolution/London,
c/o 83 Gregory Crescent, London SE9,
and Solidarity/London, c/o 123 Lathom
Road, London E6.) lOp

The aim of this pamphlet is to trace a
connecting line of thought from Marx and
Engels to Leninist state capitalism. In this,
John Crump succeeds. At least in so far as
success is to find quotations and examples
from Marx and Engels' writings
parralelled in Lenin. So here we have a
stick with which to beat the non-Leninist
Marxists. (For Marxist-Leninists the
argument that Lenin follows Marx is of
course already accepted, but with a
different interpretation.)

But herein lies my first criticism. The
pamphlet is very much in the trend of
Marxist exegesis: the "what-Marx-really-
said/meant" school. My usual response is

'so what?'. The question applies to this
pamphlet and I don't think it is
answered adequately.

The minor these is more interesting
though, unfortunately, not developed in
terms of its relevance to us today. John
Crump argues that, unlike Lenin, Marx
did have a view of communism which was
not state capitalist. So how come much
of Marx's writings lend weight to the
state capitalist school? This anomoly is
attributed to the fact that Marx was an
'activist' eager to 'get involved'. As he
lived for the most part through a
non-revolutionary situation, he was
obliged to water down his communism
to make his ideas more relevant to the
actual on-going (capitalist) struggles of
the day. The alternative was to remain
'pure' in theory, but impotent in the sense
of shying away from day-to-day practice
(a la SPBG, a party which, until recently
counted the author of this pamphlet
among its members). John Crump asserts
that the dilemma is still with us today and
will not be resolved until the working
class gets on the move and develops a
communist consciousness.

Here I begin to part company over the
view of communist consciousness (not
explained—when is it ever?—but implicit
throughout). Many times in this short
pamphlet there are references to the
'correct' theory of communism, and
Marx is.criticised for deviating from this.
But what is this 'correct theory'? Or, to
bring out my point more clearly, whose
'correct theory'? To me, there is
something false about a dilemma which
counterposes on the one hand theoretical
purity and on the other the theoretically
murky areas of activity. It is no use us
bemoaning the fact that Marx, Lenin, the
working class, or whoever are deviating
from 'the correct theory'. The task of
revolutionaries (whatever that means!) is
to observe and learn from what is already
going on in society, what is already
revolutionary, and to participate with
others in those activities in which we
find value. (I know this is begging lots of
questions, but for the time being, as they
say in Yorkshire-'nuf said!)

Bob Dent

14

Who is the
enemy ?

THE SUPERPOWERS, THE THREAT
OF WAR, AND THE BRITISH WORKING
CLASS Second World Defence pamphlet
No 1 20p.

Humanity, it is said, lives not by
reason but by the myths it creates. And
in the mythology of the traditional left
the big bogeyman has always been the
USA. Now, as the traditional left begins
to disintegrate, new myths are created to
replace those grown old and discredited.
Thus the authors of the pamphlet under
review, echoing Solzhenitsyn, claim that
the main threat to Western Europe and
its working people is from the USSR, a
power defined as State Capitalist,
imperialist, aggressive and expansionist.

Libertarians would not disagree with
this analysis, that is why when others
have prattled on about the 'Workers'
Bomb', and about defending the Workers'
States and the gains of the October
Revolution we have taken to the streets
in support of freedom in Czeckoslovakia.
That is why we have sought to expose the
activities of the KGB which uses "Russian
Empire Loyalists" in the CP and in
outfits like the Appeal Group to spy on
so-called anti-soviet activity.

That there is a threat from the East as
well as from the West cannot be denied,
for recent events in Angola, where the
super-powers sought to assert their
hegemony at the expense of the local
working class people, have all too vividly
reminded us of it. The big question,
however, is what to do about it. Having
rejected revolutionary defeatism (the
concept that the working class can use
the opportunities afforded by the crises
resulting from inter-capitalist conflicts
for its own independent, revolutionary
ends) Second World Defence falls into
the old trap of imagining that the enemies
of our enemies are our friends. Thus they
advocate an alliance between the workers
and the capitalists of what they call the
Second World, "those small and medium
sized developed capitalist countries that
are not imperialist great powers". Among
other things, such an alliance would
involve support for NATO (which is
aimed not at the 'enemy without', the
USSR, but the enemy within, the
European working class) and the
reintroduction of conscription with its
extension to women.

A similar position is held by the
Belgian Maoist group Top/Amada (see the
article, "The Belgian Maoists and the
passion for national defence" in Le
Proletaire 21 Feb-5 March 1976). In a
flamboyant declaration their National i,
Bureau states: "The Belgian people and
all the peoples of Europe have an urgent
task: reinforcement of their national
defence and preparation to defend, arms
in hand, their national freedom." It is not
so long since one British Maoist sect was
advocating an alliance between the
"progressive" capitalists (including Enoch
Powell!) and the workers against the
USA.

The fruits of such a policy of
abandoning independent conscious
working class activity in favour of an
alliance with this or that group of
capitalists can be seen in 1914 when the
leaders of the Social Democratic parties
of the Second International dropped any
pretence to being internationalist and
anti war and rushed to support on the
one hand the Fatherland against Tsarist
absolutism and on the other democracy
against Prussian militarism, encouraging
workers to march off to be slaughtered in
their millions so that the profits of the
arms barons might grow.

More recently we have seen all the
super powers come to the aid of the
government of Ceylon (which is supported
both by pro Moscow Communists and the
Trotskyists of the LSSP) against the 1971
uprising.

Since the war-time conferences at
Yalta and Teheran which divided the
Earth into spheres of influence, capitalism
has been an integrated world system. As
Second World Defence points out the
USSR, having rebuilt its war ravaged
industries by looting its East European
satellites and using the slave labour of the
prisoners in the camps, is now an exporter
of finance and industrial capital—half of
Egypt's foreign debt is to the USSR.

As recent Soviet purchases of US
wheat (which led to a protest strike by
American dockers) show not only that
the USSR has failed to sort out the
agricultural chaos created by the forced
collectivisation of the first five year plan
but also that it is willing and able to play
the game of commodity speculation.

Meanwhile, Western capital seeks new
markets in the East, Fiat builds car
factories in Togliattigrad while West
German, American and Japanese finance
and technology help the Soviet
Government to exploit the natural
resources of Siberia. The West German
Thyssen, Mannesmann Company, for
example, agreed to provide the USSR
with large diameter gas pipe on credit of
1.2 billion DM.

Over the last five years Poland has
imported several billion dollars worth of
machinery, everything from complete
chemical plants to soft drink machines.
The Polish Government is now trying to
repay its massive foreign debt by imposing
a severe programme of austerity on the
wofking class.

Second World Defence claims there is a
grave danger of war. Such a war they see
being triggered by a Soviet invasion of
Western Europe and fought along
conventional military lines with the
possible use of tactical nuclear weapons
(such weapons are equal in explosive
force to the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima). Here they are wrong. The
danger of war exists, but a war situation
is more likely to develop from attempts
by rival capitalist blocs attempting to
plunder the third world of diminishing
natural resources in an attempt to solve
their economic crisis. Although such a
war could begin as a conventional military
conflict it could all too easily develop
into an all-out nuclear conflagration.

In order not only to prevent war but
also to go forward towards a libertarian
communist society the working class must
redouble its efforts in its struggle against
capitalism. We must learn that the workers
have no fatherland, that capitalism is a
world system and can, therefore, only be
overthrown on a world scale. In our
struggle in the West our allies are not the
capitalists, however democratic they
appear to be, however much their
interests may conflict with those of the
rulers of the super powers. Our allies are
the workers of the East, the workers of
East Germany whose uprising in 1963
shook the Stalinist monolith to its
foundations, the workers of Hungary
whose councils were crushed by Soviet
tanks, the workers of Poland who
revolted against price rises, the workers
of Kiev who demonstrated with the
slogan "All Power to the Soviets".

Second World Defence are right to
quote Marx when he admonishes workers
to masters the mysteries of international
politics, but they themselves like many
leftists have much to lean and much to
forget.

Terry Liddle

(Terry Liddle is a member of Social Revolution
(London)

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LIBERTARIAN

COMMUNIST

REVIEW

JOURNAL OF REVOLUTIONARY ANARCHISM

■ Building the Party?

■ Wage Freeze.

■ Sectarianism.

■ The Two Octobers.

■ State Capitalism.

W

EDITORIAL

INTRODUCTION

B ritish Anarchists, unlike those in other countries, have in
recent years shown an almost total disregard for the develop¬
ment of a theoretical understanding of the world in which we
live and the ways in which it has to be changed. In the 1960’s
we had the “Revisionist Anarchism” of Colin Ward and those
grouped around the magazine Anarchy. What passed for
‘theory’ among this group was in fact a reformist recipe of
liberalism and pacifism in approximately equal proportions.
Anarchy almost totally ignored class struggle and had no rec¬
ognition of the central role of the working class in changing
society.

Contents

On the other hand we had the mindless activism of certain
groups and individuals within the Anarchist Federation of
Britain (now defunct). They implicitly accepted the revision¬
ist notion that “the movement is everything. - the goal is
nothing!’Many of them worked very hard in single issue cam¬
paigns - e.g. the peace movement, squatting, etc. These cam¬
paigns tended to be seen as an end in themselves, rather than
as part of the struggle against capitalism. Inevitably when
these struggles lost initial momentum the ‘activists’ either
dropped out completely or turned their attention to the wor¬
thy cause where the whole wretched process could be repeated.
Without a coherent theoretical basis to direct these activities,
the effort expended was largely wasted and the real possibility
of a revolutionary Anarchistic presence in the British work¬
ing class was lost.

Building the Revolutionary Party ?..2

Sectarianism: why it’s necessary.7

Behind the economic crisis.9

The Two Octobers.13

Notes on ftissian State Capitalism.17

Reviews .19

Published by the ORA from 277 Kinasway Pk.
Davyhulme, Manchester. Printed by
DARNTON YOLLES 36 King Street Lancaster.

The organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists has no intention
of repeating these mistakes. We base ourselves firmly on re¬
cognition of the class nature of capitalism and the fact that the
working class is the only revolutionary class within capitalist
society. But this in itself is hardly enough. It is necessary for
Anarchists to develop from this basis a relevant theory of mod¬
em capitalism which analyses its strengths and weaknesses so
that the system can be fought more effectively. Such theory,
and its development through practice, must also be capable of
defeating the authoritarian ideas of Leninism and Stalinism
which presently dominate the British left. Libertarian Com¬
munist Review has an important part to play in the develop¬
ment of such a theory, and of the ORA.

I

k

Building the

Revolutionary

Party?

Since the 1917 Russian Revolution, it has been generally accep¬
ted on the left that a revolutionary party, in the sense of a
‘van-guard’, is necessary for a successful revolution. Anarchist
criticism has been shrugged .off as coming from a numerically
insignificant group of purists, who, unlike the Leninists, have
never carried out a successful revolution. However, the denun¬
ciation of Stalin by Khruschev, and the crushing of the Hungar¬
ian revolt in 1956 (among other things) has made it manifestly
clear to all but the most blinkered that the revolution in Russia
has been a failure. It might have been thought that Leninism
would have been completely discredited, but myths about Sta¬
lin have been replaced by myths about Mao or Castro, or in
the case of the Trotskyis the myth that the revolution could
have been successful, if it rad had the ‘correct’ leadership.
Leninism, in its Stalinist or Trotskyist forms, remains the dom¬
inant ideology of the revolutionary left, partly because the em¬
phasis on authority and leadership is more comprehensible to
people raised in an authoritarian society than is the Anarchist
rejection of authoritarianism. Anarchism has often gained
ground after a revolution, when people resent attempts to re¬
impose authority on them. But though in the present situation
in Britain, the Anarchists are numerically even more insignific¬
ant than the Trotskyists, our ideas remain important since they
not only raise the question of the nature of post revolutionary
society, but also the related problem of how to launch a success¬
ful revolution. This is seen above all in the Anarchist rejection
of the revolutionary party in its Leninist sense.

The main argument of this article is that the party is the reflec¬
tion of the society it seeks to create. In looking at the major
left groupings - social democratic. Stalinist, Leninist, Trotsky¬
ist - there is obviously a certain simplification. For instance,

I ignore theories put forward by Gramsci and Luxembourg as
well as groupings like the left of the Labour Party (a peculiar
amalgam of Methodism, Social Democracy and Stalinism). A
lack of space does not allow as complete a discussion of the
problem as I would like, and certainly people like Gramsci
should not be ignored. However, at this time it is necessary to
concentrate on the main party groupings.

1. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

In bourgeois democratic society the structure of these political
parties which support the existing social order - conservative or
reformist - are mirrors of a hierarchical authoritarian society.

In the same way it can be said that those organisations which
seek to transform society in the interests of the working class
reflect within their structure the type of society they wish to
create. The social democratic party, for example, derives its str -
ucture from its attitude towards bourgeois authority. Social
democrats seek to create a socialist society on behalf of the work¬
ing class, but fail to challenge the institutios of bourgeois democ¬
racy. Since social democrats accept the authority of the bourge¬
ois state and law, they become agents of that authority. They
make the mistake of assuming that the state stands above the
class conflict, to be captured at elections by the representatives
of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. In fact the State is in the
midst of the class struggle, operating as the armed wing of the
ruling class. This can be seen not only in this country, but also
in other European Social Democratic parties (eg. the French
socialists under Mollet sent troops on an imperialast expedition
to Suez in 1956 - and justified it in Marxist terms. The German
social democrats have a long history of acting as instruments
of bourgeois authority, from their suppression of the Spartakist
revolt to their support for the West German emergency laws).

The contradictions of social democracy - a result of its attitude
to authority - resolve themselves into the position of undermin¬
ing the revolutionary potential of the working class.

The social democratic vision of a new society - essentially the
same as the old one in all respects but with the exception that
the people are ruled with a beneficial paternalism which will
end inequalities - is mirrored in its organisational structure.

The leadership is a small bureaucracy running a mass party. The
most important section of the leadership - the parliamentary
party - is completely out of control of the mass organisation.
Nominations for parliamentary candidature must be approved
by the leadership. In Britain, the Labour Party group which
draws up policies for the next election (the National Executive

Committee) is elected by non mandated conference delegates,
and is thus out of control of the membership. When left wing
.policies are put forward they are ignored (eg. Gaitskell over
CND, in 1960 and Wilson during and after government office).
The mass membership of the party has all the abstract freedoms
of bourgeois society - freedom of speech, freedom to hold
radically different ideas etc., • so that Trotskyist ‘entrist’
groups like the Revolutionary Socialist League can co-exist with
rightists like Woodrow Wyatt (and millionaire capitalists like
Robert Maxwell) without upsetting the party .The parallels with
bourgeois society are made complete by the fact that as soon
as ‘subversive’ groups begin to pose a serious threat, as did the
Communist Party in the 20’s or the SLL in the 60’$ they are
expelled en masse. Of course this does not mean that social
democratic parties are any more free of mass pressures than are
the ruling class. They need to win elections, and are often driv¬
en to absurd promises, like calling for a price freeze in a capital¬
ist society caught in the throes of international inflation - a
policy made more absurd and phoney by the fact that it is
proposed by Wilson and Callaghan, instigators of the 1966 wage
freeze. We can see from this that the institutionalised formal
democracy of social democratic parties - a form without any
substance • is a mirror of the social democrat’s vision of social¬
ism as a bourgeois society without the bourgeoisie.

2.THE STALINIST PARTIES

Unlike the social democrats the Stalinists (and I do not count
the British CP as Stalinist but as left social democrat) seek to
challenge bourgeois authority. However, they do not do so in
the interests of democratic liberty, but in the interests of an
opposing authority which claims to be more efficient than the
bourgeoisie. Capitalist ‘anarchy’ will be replaced by bureau -
cratic planning which will end bourgeois exploitation and in -
equality of distribution .The Stalinist view of a socialist society
- a bureaucratic State on the model of the USSR, with a mon¬
olithic ideology, where a small leadership dictates policy to the
masses,- is reflected in the structure of the Stalinist parties.
Because of its historic origins in Leninism, the party is commit-
ed to democratic centralism, but real democracy is absent, be -
cause of the banning of factions, and the demand that the mem¬
bership must submit completely to the policies worked out in
the Central Committee.

The Stalinists’ subjection to the need to defend Russia often
leads to a situation where it can be revolutionary (eg.the big
strike called by the Communists in France and Italy in 1947/48)
or, more usually, counterrevolutionary (eg.Stalinist opposition
to the Spanish revolution of 1936, their attitude to the May re¬
volt in France in 1968). The contradictions of Stalinism attemp¬
ting to change society are no less great than those of social
democracy.

3. LENIN’S CONCEPT OF THE PARTY

Unlike social democracy and Stalinism, Leninism seeks to chal¬
lenge bourgeois authority in the name of revolutionary freedom.
Lenin in ‘State and Revolution’ called for a society where the
State - defined as an instrument of class oppression - would
eventually disappear. The paradox emerges when a Leninist
government suppressed freedom and smashed the attempt of
the Russian working class to free itself from rulers. This para¬
dox is made clear only if we keep in mind that the revolution¬
ary party is a reflection of the social order it seeks to create.

It is significant that Chris Harman should write that:“./if is im¬
portant to note that for Lenin the party is not the embryo of
the workers ’ state. ”(1), while at the same time attributing the

3

failure of the Russian revblutiop to the fact that it took place
in a non-industrialised country' racked by Civil War and inter -
national bourgeois intervention. While nobody can underesti -
mate the tremendous consequences of such ‘external’ factors,
it would be completely misleading to ignore ‘internal’ factors
such as the Leninist theory of the Party and the relationship
between the party and the working class.

Lenin’s theory of the party is derived from his view of the na -
ture of revolution and the role of revolutionaries. Revolution,
Lenin correctly saw, is of necessity authoritarian. As Engels
wrote: “A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing
there is: it is an act whereby one part of the population impos¬
es its will on the other by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon,
all of which are highly authoritarian means. ”(2) (This does not
mean of course that a revolution cannot be the most liberating
thing there is). From this arises the idea that a transitional re¬
gime - the dictatorship of the proletariat - is needed to smash
any attempt by the bourgeoisie to destroy the revolution. The
role of the revolutionary party in this situation is the role of
political leadership of the working class. “There could not have
been social democratic consciousness among the workers. It
would have to be brought to them from without...the working
class exclusively by its own efforts is able to develop only trade
union consciousness’’(3). Lenin later modified this position
to take account of the undeniable spontaneity of the class.
(“The economists have gone to one extreme. To straighten mat¬
ters out one had to pull in the other direction, and this is what
I have done ” (4). Lenin often pointed out that the proletariat
was sometimes more revolutionary than the party. But the pri¬
mary role of creating consciousness lies in the party: “The wor¬
king class is instinctively, spontaneously social democratic, and
more than ten years of work put in by social democracy has
done a great deal to transform this spontaneity into conscious¬
ness. ”(5) Leadership is absolutely necessary for revolutionary
success because of the fragmentation of consciousness and the
organisation of the ruling class. But the nature of this leader -
ship is more than mere persuasion and raising of consciousness.
Such leadership is inevitable in any situation where many people
are confused because they have never thought about the issues
and listen to someone who has - who is in that sense a leader.
An organization which seeks to link local struggles and explain a
future course is, whether we like it or not, necessary. But the
Leninist party is not only concerned with ideological leadership.
It seeks political leadership of the State, since the proletariat, un¬
like a democratic centralist party, does notnnecessarily have the
‘concrete view’ even after a revolution. Even in his most ‘liber¬
tarian ’ text Lenin writes: “By educating the workers’party,
Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of
assuming power and leading the whole people to socialism ” (6)
Lenin later explains the reason for this vanguard ot the proleta¬
riat : “We are not Utopians, we do not dream of disposing at
once with all administration, with all subordination.... No, we
want the socialist revolution with subordination, control and
foremen and accountants. ”( 7) Any notion of self emancipa¬
tion and self education is missing in Lenin. Realising the strenght
of the authoritarian culture he attacks and underestimates the
speed with which many people overthrow authoritarian ideo¬
logy in a revolutionary situation. He fails to see that"., if the
prolet ariat itself does not know how to create the necessary
prerequisites for the socialist organisation of labour, no one
can do this for it and no one can compel it to do this.. Social¬
ism and socialist organisation will be set up by the proletariat
itself, or they will not be set up at all Something else will be
set up - State capitalism ” (8).

4

4. LENINIST SUBSTITUTIONISM.

Just as in the transitional regime of ‘proletarian’ dictatorship the
hierarchy of authority and subordination remains, so in the
party there is in the Central Committee and its policies. There
is a hierarchy of authority. District and factory circles, local and
territorial committees are elected and their decisions are then
communicated from the top down. Opposition from the sub¬
ordinates is quashed, or at oest tolerated. In Russia the Left
Communists were hounded out of existence in 1918. From the
Democratic Centralists and the Workers’ Opposition were frow¬
ned upon, and eventually, in 1921, after a party Congress which
oppositionist claimed had rigged delegations, afi factions were
banned within the party (like most permanent bans, this was
‘temporary’). The Cheka was then used agaist the oppositionists
forced to illegally. Trotsky summed up Leninist ideas vividly in
1924 when he said: "...the Party in the last analysis is always
right, because the Party is the single historical instrument given
to the proletariat for the solution of its basic problems... I know
that one must not be right against the party. One can be right
only with the Party, and through the Party, for history has no
other road for being in the right. "(9) Ironically it was Trotsky
himself who, in 1904 had pointed out the danger of such ideas.
Before he became a Leninist he in a polemic against Leninist
views of the Party: “ The organisation of the party substitutes
itself for the party as a whole, when the central committee it¬
selffor the organisation, and finally the dictator substitutes
himself for the central committee. "(10)

This substitutionism in the party was reflected in the society
the Bolsheviks created. The rule of the party (or rather, its
Central Committee) was substituted for the rule of the pro¬
letariat. The workers’ committees running industry were castra¬
ted in 1917-1918 (before the civil war, the devastating effects
of which are the constant excuse for Trotskyist and Stalinist
apologists) in preparation for one man management. By the sum¬
mer of 1918 elections to the Soviets had become a farce. In 1918
the Red Army, originally a democratic militia, was transformed
by Trotsky into a non-democratic army on the bourgeois model,
with saluting, different living quarters for officers, the death pe¬
nalty for desertion etc.. In 1920 Trotsky (supported at first by
Lenin) called for the militarisaton of labour - labour armies to
be used as scabs - and the substitution of Party -controlled pro¬
duction unions for genuine Trade Unions. The nature of the Par¬
ty after 1914 (when it was braodened by many who agreed with
Lenin only on the need to turn the imperialist war into a civil
war) meant that these proposals came under fire from a signifi¬
cant minority (and in the case of the militarisation of labour
proposal* a majority). But as we have seen this opposition, and
even the right to organise opposition, was effectively ended with
the 1921 Party Congress.

Thus the original paradox, that Leninism, a doctrine calling for
revolutionary freedom destroyed that freedom, can be seen not
to be a paradox at all. Lenin’s talk of proletarian democracy,
and freedom from authority in ‘State and Revolution’ remained
just that - talk. By removing such notions to a vague future,

Lenin banished them to therealm of abstraction. What remained
was the immediate task ofoverthrowing capitalism and establish¬
ing a transitional regime. Burgeois authority was not challenged
by the authority of a revolutionary proletariat (which alone
would have laid the real preconditions for the abolition of au¬
thoritarianism) but by the authority of a political party - self
proclaimed ‘vanguard of the proletariat’. Precisely because, as
one prominent Left Communist proclaimed “ socialism and
socialist organisation will be set up by the proletariat itself, or
they will not be set up at all", the transitional’ regime of
1917/18 remains with us today, more powerful than ever.

5. THE TROTSKYIST ATTITUDE.

The Trotskyist never learned anything from failure of the Rus¬
sian revolution. Trotsky himself was never to make more than
a partial break with the USSR., and was led into the contradictory
position of defining Russia as a degenerated workers’ state. Le¬
ninist organisation with its hierarchies, its authoritarianism and
its notions of leadership and subordination remained. “ The
leading cadre plays the same decisive role in relation to the par¬
ty that the party plays in relation to the class"(11) writes Can¬
non, leader of the largest of the American Trotskyist groups, the
Socialist Workers’ party. There is the same intolerance to oppo¬
sition : "Those who try to break up the historically created cadres
of the Trotskyist parties are in reality aiming to break up the
parties and to liquidate the Trotskyist movement. They will
not succed. The Trotskyist parties will liquidate the liquidators,
and the SWP has the high historic privilege of setting the examp¬
le". (12) These are the madmen that claim to be our leaders!

The authoritarian structure of the parties is a reflection of the
society they seek to create.

Another Trotskyist leader, Ernest Mandel, writes: "Anyone who
believes that the mass of the imperialist countries are ready today
to take over the running of the economy at once, without first
passing through the school of workers ’ control, is deceiving him¬
self and others with dangerous illusions. ” (13) More explicitly
he writes: “The production relations are not changed so long
as the private employer has merely been replaced by the em -
ployer state, embodied in some all power manager, technocrat
or bureaucrat.... The classical solution is the succession of pha¬
ses: workers’ control (ie. supervision of the management by the
workers), workers participation in the management; and workers
self- management. ” (14). Like Lenin, the Trotskyists wish d«r
mocracy and freedom away to a vague future ‘when the workers
are ready for it’. They also reduce it to an abstraction.

6. LENINISM - THE I.S. VARIANT.

The one revolutionary group in Britain which seemed to many
to have learned the lessons of the failure of the Russian revolu¬
tion, and attemptgd to be both Leninist and libertarian, was
the International Socialists. Their emphasis on democracy
within the party is shown in a book by three of their most pro¬
minent members - Party and Class. Here Duncan Hallas writes
that a revolutionary party cannot possibly be created except
on a thoroughly democratic basis, that unless in its internal life
vigorous tendencies and shades of opinion are represented, a
socialist party cannot rise above the level of a sect. "Internal
democracy is not an optional extra. It is fundamental to the re¬
lationship between party members and those amongst whom
they work. "(15) In the same book Tony Cliff writes:" because
the working class is far from being monolithic, and because the
path to socialism is uncharted, wide differences of strategy and
tactics can and should exist in the revolutionary party. The al¬
ternative is the bureacratised party or the sect with its leader...
Scientific socialism must live and thrive on controversy" (16)

It seems odd that such democratic sentiments should co-exist
with a total support foLthe Bolshevik practice during the Rus¬
sian revolution. Even those members of I.S. who, like Peter
Sedgewick argued that the degeneration of the revolution had oc¬
curred by 1918, attribute the decay to the “military depredation
and economic ruin which wrought havoc in an already enfeebled
Russia. "(17) No mention of the Leninist view of the Party.
Libertarian socialism and Leninism are incompatible - and the
I.S. group has remained Leninist, and we have recently begun
to see the results.

5

The stress on democracy within the group has been exposed as
hollow. As early as 1971, the I.S. leadership reversed a nation¬
al conference decision that the group should take a prmcipled
abstentionist position on Britain’s entry into the E.E.L. In¬
stead they adopted a position of opposition to entry, ihe

way in which the opposition groups like Workers Fight and the
“Right Opposition” were expelled is startling in vie woft he
group’s previous emphasis on faction rights Tony Cliff has
abandoned his earlier position m Party ana! Class that wide
differences in strategy and tactics can and should exist in the
revolutionary party 18), and now holds that I.S, is a vo¬
luntary organisation of people who disagree or agree within nar -
row limits” (19).

The libertarian rhetoric of a society based on workers’ councils
remains, but it is nothing more than a rhetoric. Certain questions
are never raised, let alone answered. Will the factones be under
workers’ self-management during the“transitional penod ?

Will the Workers’ State be a federation of workers councils
under the direct control of the working class (a libertarian idea),
or will it be a centralised bureaucracy co-existing with workers
councils on the Yugoslav model (a Leninist idea)? What hap-
pens if there is a conflict between the centralised authority and
the workers’ councils? (When such a conflict occured in Rus¬
sia in 1917/18 and in Spain 1936/37 it was the councils who
lost out). Above all, what will be the relationships of the van-
guard party to the State, the Workers’ Councils, and the work-
ing class? How will it avoid substitutionism? Cliffs argument
in Party and Class that substitutionism can be stopped by a di¬
ligent leadership is completely inadequate.

7 THE LIBERTARIAN POSITION.

Nobody denies that the condition for revolution in Britain will
be different from those that prevailed in Russia. However , the
idea of a vanguard party^jemains, as does the danger that the
“transitional period” will proye far from transitional. The idea
that the working class can be liberated by a party - no matter
how correct its line - is an abstraction. All that would happen
would be the creation of a new ruling class, as has been seen in
Russia and other “socialist” countries. The working class must
liberate itself, as. called for by Marx, and in doing so it will create
the preconditions for the liberation of all oppressed groups from
authority.

Our relationship to Leninist theory must be made clear. Leninism
has its strerights as well as its weaknesses. Its recognition that
working class consciousness is fragmented and generally under
the hold of bourgeois ideology is essentially correct. While he
underestimates how quickly workers can free themselves frm
authoritarian ideology, Lenin did recognise the importance of
leadership. Anarchists must overcome their fear of the idea of
leadership, and recognise that in any situation where people
are confused , an anarchist will provide leadership where he or
she advocates libertarian solutions. The difference is that where¬
as anarchist leadership consists of persuation and agitation, the
Leninist vanguard party seeks to go beyond agitation to actual
political leadership through its control of the state. For the
purpose of agitation on a national scale some type of organi¬
sation is necessary, and here also Leninism should be looked at
more carefully. Lenin saw that the organisation of the party

Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists

10 LIBERTARIAN STRUGGLE

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was determined by the authoritarian society in which it existed
(though he did not see that the structure of a vanguard party
determined the society which it created), and tried to solve the
problem by adopting democratic centralism. Democratic cent¬
ralism is suited for a vanguard party, but libertarianism must
reject such a form of organisation which usually turns out to be
more centralised than democratic. What is needed is an organi¬
sation with a high degree of theoretical clarity and a fully deve¬
loped sense of responsibility towards other comrades, while at
the same time maintaining a maximumof political discussion
within the organisation. A central co-ordinating body is vital,
though there must be complete and absolute control over it by
the membership and its task should be minimal and clearly de¬
fined.

Some anarchists have criticised Lenin for his ruthlessness, but
I believe that such a criticism should be rejected. Any success¬
ful revolution will be faced withthe possibility of civil war and
tremendous economic difficulties which it will be forced to meet
ruthlessly if the revolution is to survive. In doing this it may be
necessary to do some horrifying things such as killing ordinary
workers who are fighting for the counter-revolution. But there
will be qualitative differences between the libertarian and the
Leninist attitudes. We are fighting for different aims, and so
must reject policies like creating a secret police, prison camps
and “red terror”. Such policies would destroy revolutionary
freedom. We must be prepared to accept defeat rather than
engage in such actions.

Finally, we must recognise with Lenin that authority can only be
be defeated by authority. Lenin recogised that the State is an
instrument of coercion by one class against -another, and pointed
out that a Workers’ State will be necessary in the turmoil of re¬
volution in order to coerce the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, we
must differentiate ourselves from Lenin’s view of the State.

To Lenin the state was a centralised republic co-existing with
workers’ councils, with the vanguard party controlling the centre.
To libertarians, it is a decentralised federation of workers’ coun¬
cils under the direct and absolute control of the working class.

Such a state is one that begins to cease being a state almost
immediately. It is not the institutionalisation of class oppres¬
sion like the Leninist state, but the foundations of liberation.
Since the concept of a workers’ state is now fully associated
with Leninism, and it is thereby simplified to become merely
class oppression rather than being simultaneously the institutions
of liberation which necessitates the dissolution of the State, an¬
archists reject the revolutionary society will have a state in its
initial phase.

One thing we must reject clearly is the notiop of a cenralised
vanguard party. The division of labour between those who rule
and those who are ruled has lasted too long, and can only be en¬
ded by the self-emancipation of the working class. It is absolu¬
tely necessary that anarchists clarify their relationship to this
self-emancipation, and the debate on organisation within the
libertarian movement must develop in a clear and realistic di¬
rection.

Notes

(/) Chris Harmon - Party and Class.

(2) Engels - On Authority.

(3) Lenin - What i s to be done?

(4) Lenin - Second Congress of the R. S. D.L.P.

(5) Lenin - The Re-organization of the Party.

(6) Lenin - The State and Revolution.

(7) ibid.

(8) Osinsky - On the building of Socialism

in Kommunist

(9) Trotsky - Thirteenth Party Congress.

(JO) Trotsky - Our Political Tasks.

(11) James Cannon - Factional Struggle and Party

Leadership, inS.W.P. pamphlet
In defence of the Revolutionary
Party.

(12) Ibid.

(13) Handel - Workers Control and Workers Councils.

(14) Handel - Marxist Economic Theory. Vol. 2.

(>5) Duncan Hal las - Towards a Revolutionary Socialist
Party in Party and Class.

(16) Tony Cliff - Trotsky on Subst i tut ion i sm

in Party and Cl ass.

(17) Peter Sedgwick - Victor Serge on Party and Class.

in International Socialism 50.

(18) Tony Cliff - Party and Class.

(19) Cliff and Hag/iatti - Main features of the pro¬

gramme we need in I.S.
Internal Bulletin Jan 1973.

7

SECTARIANISM:
WHY IT’S
NECESSARY

BY STEVE KIBBLE

Recent issues of Libertarian Struggle have devoted some space
to analysing and attacking the role of I.S. in Teachers Rank and
File. T his kind of analysis is obviously necessary, yet many pe¬
ople who consider themselves vaguely left feel very uneasy when
they read articles by one group attacking another. It’s consider¬
ed somehow distasteful, but above all it’s sectarian, implying
that the group has placed their own importance above that of
the working class. There is some truth in this. Sections of the
Maoist movement, differing on minor questions, label the others
“conscious agents of imperialism”, “fronts for the CIA’,’ etc.

All very good stuff for the sect collector but of very little use to
anyone else, least of all the working class. There would appear
to be two different types of sectarianism. The latter variety
isn’t sectarianism in the classic sense of the word, but then the
definitions have spread a little.

The first definition i.e. sectarian proper is that which occurs
between different groups vying for that much sought after pos -
ition - “the leadership of the working class.”

Since a study of all the set books can entitle one to this position,
the situation rapidly becomes confusing. At the moment two
particular groups have by their own vehemence at least attained
this. One being the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Lenin-
ist) and the other the Socialist Labour League. Since they hold
this position, then clearly everyone else must not only be wrong,
but consciously wrong, and thus “objectively being on the side
of the ruling class!’ The patent absurdity of this position is ob¬
vious, but it continues to dominate the politics of these two
groups. Among other less paranoid vyers for the leadership of
the working class, the usual litmus paper test is who has the
most members. At least this bears some relationship to reality
and shows that their ideas do have credibility amongst the most
advanced sections of the working class. But still the argument
is couched in terms laid down by Lenin. There can only be one
leadership which has defeated the others to create the monolith¬
ic highly-centralised body that will lead them to the revolution.
Then, since it represents the most advanced sections, it will rule
in the transitional period between capitalism and full commun¬
ism until the class is ready for full power itself.

The other kind of sectarianism and one that I would argue is
totally necessary is attempting to differentiate between groups
that appear to say the same thing and want the same objective,
but whose practice, theory and methods of action are entirely
different. Here one has to state quite specifically, usbig histor¬
ical experience and present day analysis to show that there is a
difference, and it can not only be seen to be a paper difference
but one that has a direct bearing on the eventual emergence of
a working class capable and willing to organise itself to over -
throw capitalism and replace it with workers’ power. Since
there is a strong link between the way a group is internally str¬
uctured, its method of operation (tactics), and its supposed aim,
then everything is up for attack.

Libertarians have to be very aware of this. We are probably the
smallest grouping active in the working class and thus the least
effective. At this present time it is fairly easv to be an effective
Leninist group with the working class, or at feast the most class
conscious elements in it, only recently being weaned away from
the myth that social democracy truly “represents” the working
class and can bring about social justice and equality. Our ideas
are different from “follow us and see a new society created”
and we have to show this very clearly in our ideas and in the
kind of organisations that we wish to help to create in the wor¬
king class. We believe that the working class should control
society. This means what it says; not that the party, represent¬
ing the most advanced sections, should control society. We be¬
lieve in independent working class activity; not just in depend*
ent of every group but us. We believe in rank and file movemen¬
t's in the unions; not in groups set up by group cadres with
ready-made policies and papers laid down by a leadership that
knows all the answers. We believe in learning from the class
as much as trying to teach and initiate; not in making a token
bow to participation. In all these our tactics should relate to
our eventual aims. Likewise our organisation and its structure
should relate to our tactics and aims. As we believe in free
speech in the working class, so we believe in free speech in tfe*
organisation. We believe that minorities have the right to put
their position, both internally and publicly, as long as it is dear
that it is a minority viewpoint. We believe that no one group

8

of pgonjp sfiQ iild keep their knowledge to themselves, but in -
-t&& experience should be shared and
Uum^PtettlvIs^fhAr'-othe^sbe encouraged to contribute as
much as possible. We believe that no group should have the
power of certain positions to dominate others. And so all pos -
itions are either mandated on a recallable basis or the necessary
functions are rotated, both to avoid power positions and to
spread experience..

All this helps to create an organisation that should be efficient
and libertarian. There is a direct link between this and organis¬
ing to create a society built the same way. Not that we seek
to become the revolutionary microcosm of the working class -
which is some kind of crypto-Leninist position. What is needed
is a clear understanding and analysis of why actions are under -
taken and why certain ideas are better than others. And why
the essential differences between us and others need to be made
clear.

Thus sectarianism is clearly necessary. And it is most necessary
against those who appear to be close to us, but in fact are not.

It is an easy matter to distinguish ourselves from reformism and
its ageing stablemate, Stalinism. The difference between our -
selves and the most authoritarian Trotskyist and Maoist groups
are again fairly obvious. Where sectarianism is most needed is
against groups like I.S. who have become adept at taking away
selected portions of libertarian clothing in order to cover up the
more unattractive parts of Lenin’s body. Their cynical manip¬
ulation of so-billed rppk and file groups has to be attacked and
attacked unti^fhere U a general realisation-that rank and file
does mean groups Of ‘autonomous workers organising in their
own defence and putting forward their own ideas. And that
the role of revolutionary organisation is to help this, not to use
them to build up blocs in the unions to challenge the leadership
and recruit en masse. In attacking I.S;’s political tactics it is
quite valid to call in to question the structure of I.S. and how
it has become far mote centralised and how the National Com¬
mittee would like to make it more so. Faction and tendency
rights have been eroded away. There are proposals to regional
committees from federal and delegate bodies into groups of the
best cadres in the area as chosen by the National Committee.
There are proposals to limit branches to only one resolution at
conference and that based on the perspectives document drawn
up by the National Committee. Note should also be taken of
the physical intimidation of other left groups that I.S. seems to
be indulging in - the beating up of a Red Weekly seller and
others in Liverpool, the threatened doing-over of Big Flame.All
this relates to the lind of politics that I.S. is currently pursuing
in their hope to take up the place in the shade recently vacated
by the Communist, Party.

In short, we need to use sectarianism as a weapon to destroy
any hold that groups dominated by theories of Leninism and
reformism have over sections of the working class. That is what
we are aiming to do, even if it is not usually phrased like that.

If we believe in workers’ power then those ideas stand in the
way of the fulfilment of that belief. Not that we should fight
them in the way that I.S. appears to be fighting its opponents
i.e. literally, but fighting them by our argument and organisation
and our willingness to learn.

Publications

Organisational Platform of the Libertarian
Communists. (ORA pamphlet) advance orders
to D. Young , OliBurgh aad Driv » i Linthouoo,

Mole Express Manchester voice of revolutionary
struggle. News/re views/exposes/graphics/
features. 1 Op monthly from 7, Summer Terrace,
Winchester 14 SWD.

The Tyranny of Stnicturelessness by Jo
Freeman. Obtainable from L

‘Libertarians in all movements should study
this pamphlet because it contains the core of
the argument that ORGANISED libertarians
have stated.' Review in April Libertarian
Struggle.

Front Libertaire fortni^itly paper of O.R.A.
France. Sample copy from North London group,
subscriotirr. details from 33, rue des Vignoles,
75020 Paris, France.

Michael Tobin, who was jailed for two years
being in possession of leaflets calling on
Qitish Army soldiers to desert, has been
released. He wishes to be contacted by fellow
at—prisoners, or prisoners, to organise a
campaign against the British penal system.
Contact Michael Tobin, P.O. Box 10638,
Ansterdam, Holland.

De Vrije socialist paper of the Dutch Libertar¬
ian Socialist Federation. For copies write to,
Jan Bervoets, willemde zwijgerlaan 104, Den
Haag, Netherlands.

Inside story the radical magazine which
specialises in the stories Fleet St won’t print.
For sample copy send 25p to Dept. AP 20,

3, Belmont Road, London S.W. 4

Solidarity, a paper .for militants in industry
ant! elsewhere. 6p. plus post from 1 23,
Latham Road, London, E.6

9

Behind the
economic crisis

by Al McNeillie

In Britain the world trends of slowing down in economic grow¬
th (apart from 1973) and a relative decline in productivity in
the advanced industrial countries, a fall in profit margins, a
decline in investment in important sectors of the economy,
and the consequent galloping inflation as increased costs are
passed on as higher prices, are intensified by a lack of compet-
itivity. This lack of competitivity is a central feature of
20th century British and economic history. Britain’s domin -
ance of 1870 when her exports equalled a third of the world’s
total was gradually eroded mainly by the deyelopmdnt of the
U.S. and Germany as major industrial powers. By 1913 Brit -
ain’s share had dropped to 13%- a decline which necessitated
the imperialist war of 1914-1918 and the savage attacks on
the working class in the immediate post-war years. This period
culminated in the massive working class defeat of 1926 and
the adoption of a depressed economy in the inter-war years.
The main reason why there was no fascist solution to the pro¬
blems of British capitalism was not because of the democratic
and undogmatic nature of the British as is frequently asserted,
but because the ruling-class had already defeated the workers,
in the General Strike and because the Wall Street crash had
a minimal impact on Britain. The British economy was already
depressed. The fact that standards of living have increased
greatly since 1945 as a result of capitalist expansion in the
West tended to disguise the reality of the situation. The truth
of the matter was that Britain’s position vis a vis her rivals
continued to decline so that Britain now produces less than
4% of the world’s output.

The slackening of the post-war expansion in the mid-1960’s re¬
vealed Britain’s weakness - a weakness which has been express¬
ed in countless balance of payments crises, devaluations, and
“stop-go” policies. If British capitalism is to be made compet¬
itive there are three imperatives: the raising of profit margins,
the stimulation of investment, and, most importantly, a major
attack on working-class standards of living and workers’ organ-
isations.These imperatives mutually reinforce each other. To
take an example: one of the reasons for the lack of investment
in British industry has been that British capitalists have often

preferred to invest in countries where there is a disciplined,
low-paid labour force (as in South Africa) where profit levels
are higher and there is little danger of the workers becoming
“bloody minded!’ This the ruling-class and successive Labour
and Tory governments have clearly realised. In recent years we
have seen numerous aspects of this three-pronged strategy in
operation - from productivity deals to attacks on the welfare
state and council housing; from tax concessions to the rich
“In Place of Strife!’ and the Industrial Relations Act; and fin¬
ally, Heath’s “Prices and Incomes Policy’.’ The fact that the
Tory government accepted the potentially crippling costs of
Britain’s entry into the EEC is an indication of how desper¬
ate is the position of British capitalism.

However, it has gradually emerged that the key factor in the
equation

higher profits + greater investment + attack on working-class

= expansion = restoration of British competitivity
is the attitude of the working class. The industrial and politic¬
al strength of a strong, confident labour movement (I don’t
want to underestimate the limitations of the British working
class movement but they will be discussed later) has repeatedly
frustrated ruling class strategy. The unions sank Barbara
Castle’s‘IR Place of Strife l ,’the miners smashed the norm-1%
strategy; rank and file initiative freed the London dockers -
the first purely political strike since the General Strike - and
has rendered the Industrial Relations Act innocuous (at least
up till now). In short, the necessity to make British capital -
ism competitive requires the ruling the ruling class to wage
ever more naked class war on the workers, and the working-
class is not taking this lying down. Strikes are increasing in
duration and in the numbers involved (see table below). Milit¬
ancy has brought with it novel forms of struggle - the occup¬
ations, flying pickets etc., and tentative moves from rank and
file trades unionists to break down the sectional differences
that bedevil the trade union movement eg. the strike of the
Birmingham engineers and their support of th£ miners which
forced the closing of the Saltley coal depot. The most recent
manifestation of this war of attrition in which both sides are
slowly but clearly increasing the stakes, is Heath’s Wage Freeze.

1953-64 (average)

1965

1966

1967

1968

1970

1971

Jan-Oct 1972

Number of workers
involved
(000's)

1,081

876

544

734

2,258

1,665

1,801

1,171

1,353

Average number of
days per worker on
strike
3.3

3.3

4.4
4.0
2.1

4.1

6.1
12.1
17.1

Number of working
days lost
(000's)

3,712

2,925

2,398

2,787

4,680

6,876

10,980

13,551

22,202

THE FREEZE AND PROSPECTS FOR PHASE THREE

Phases One and Two have been largely successful for the Tories.
Most trades unionists have sullenly accepted wage restraint,
and those workers who have fought against it * civil servants,
London teachers, gas and hospital workers - have been defeat¬
ed. Profit levels are increasing (indeed so high that the Financ¬
ial Times has called them “embarrassing”). There is evidence
of increased investment in industry, and the Sunday Times re¬
ports that (British industry is planning a massive surge of in¬
vestment in new factories and new plant” (1). The latest statis¬
tics show a productivity boom which seems to be in excess of
5% per annum. Nevertheless, the euphoria of the Tory press
should not blind us to the fact that there are three very nasty
storm clouds ahead for the government - world trends, balance
of payments problems, and the inevitable breakdown of the
Government - TUC talks with the resulting explosion of work¬
ing-class anger this autumn and winter.

The I.S. group’s economists are absolutely correct in stressing
the re-emergence of the international trade cycle as a major
factor in the world economic situation. The fact that the Brit¬
ish economic revival is not unique must be recognised. The com¬
ment of “The Economist” they use to illustrate this deserves
repeating: “ All major countries experienced record growth in

the first quarter (of1973) . Japan notched up a 15% rate,

the United States the largest in any quarter since the Korean
War, and Germany and France also raced ahead despite short¬
ages of capacity and labour . orders everywhere are ris -

ing. Germany’s overseas orders for heavy engineering were up
by a third on a year ago. (But at the same time) inflation fore¬
casts were less optimistic and growth everywhere will slow down
next year . Now we all march in step national trends re¬

inforce each other. So the 1974 slowdown could lead to a
1975 recession”(2). A further recession seems almost inevit¬
able in the next two or three years.

More immediately, Britain is going to face a massive balance
of payments problem by the end of the year. British capitalism
seems to be so structurally uncompetitive that it cannot even
take advantage of successive devaluations of the pound and it
is certain that in British conditions expansion, together with
the frailty of the pound in the international money money mar¬
kets, precipitates a balance of payments deficit. The fact that
since entering the Common Market the trade deficit with other
member countries is increasing is an ominous trend. Already
The Times has labelled the current expansion as “the boom
which must go bust”, and on this year’s performance it is likely
that by the end of 1973 Britain will be £1000m. in the red.

The floating pound gives a certain amount of elbow room to
the Heath government, but whether it will be enough to avoid
a major balance of payments crisis is extremely doubtful. A
major crisis, of course, would necessitate a deflationary budget
and an end to expansion - politically disastrous for the Tories.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the Tory government faces the
probability of large scale industrial unrest this winter. The list
of unions with wage claims pending is enough to frighten any
government, let alone the present one whose position is so vul -
nerable. Miners, engineers, electricians,railwaymen and public
service employees have put in for claims which the government
cannot possibly concede, while Hull dockers are already mount¬
ing one-day strikes every week in pursuit of an £8 per week
increase. The fear of such an explosion of working-class resent¬
ment has led the bosses’ paper par excellence and defender of
the principles of free trade - The Economist - to argue for
food subsidies not because it may alleviate hardship but simply
because it may take a little steam out of the battles to come
this winter. The reasoning is this:

“To suggest these schemes does not mean that any sort of
government subsidy for either food or mortgages is desirable.
The purpose has simply been to argue which variant of subsidy
scheme would be least bad. In conditions of considerable ex¬
ternal difficulty, the Heath Government does seem to be about

to sponsor a reasonably sensible general economic policy ..

The worst outcome for the country this winter will be if that
policy, and hopes for the cohesion of British society are des -
troyed by illegal strikes that enjoy too much tacit public sup¬
port. The best outcome will be if the policy is effectively ac¬
cepted and enforced by the public . In order to escape

from the worst outcome towards the best it could be worth
introducing some cosmetic illogicalities, if they would make
what is said to be a harridan of a policy look more attractive
and cheer people up. ” (3)

However, clutching at straws like food subsidies and the.remote
possibility of agreement between the government and the TUC
is useless. Partial concessions, threshold agreements .selective
subsidies, amendments of the I.R.Act etc. may indeed win over
some to supporting Phase 3, but it is hardly likely that any¬
thing short of a freeze on prices (which is impossible) will ap -
pease workers and postpone the inevitable confrontation for a
few more months. The freeze was supposed to be part of an
anti-inflation policy but the experience is that while their wages
have been frozen, prices have continued to soar. Inflation,rising
at nearly 10% per annum with food prices rising at nearly 20%
is sure to continue at unacceptable levels. The choice for wor¬
kers is a stark one: accept Phase 3 and what is effectively a
wage cut - or fight back. Most workers are going to fight. A
long and bitter confrontation over the next few months is a
certainty.

CONFRONTATION AND ORGANIZATION

The coming confrontation raises a whole series of questions
about the nature of the British Labour movement and its abil¬
ity to win the next battle in this war of attrition - not that
victory or defeat for either workers or government is likely to

11

be decisive in the long term. It is interesting to recall the com¬
ments of Willie Gallagher and J.R.Campbell. Both were active
in a remarkably similar situation to the present one - a crumb¬
ling economy, inflation, a period of heightened class war. They
argued that the different levels of struggle demanded different
forms of organization:

"It was never so necessary as it is now for the workers’ move¬
ment to submit itself to the most ruthless self-criticism. Old
tactics and old methods of organization have to be overhauled
and brought up to date to enable us to meet and overcome
the latest developments of organization from the employers'
side. Delay spells disaster. Everywhere the organization of
the employers and its catspaw government is being improved
to meet all eventualities. If we do not counter these develov •
ments with improved organization, then the existing organiz -
ations will be no more able to deflect the employers from im¬
posing industrial serfdom on us than a matchbox in the path
of a steamroller could deflect it from its path," (4)

Gallagher and Campbell here highlight a problem which is relev¬
ant tothe present working class, particularly to industrial milit¬
ants. In a period when strikes are national, involve increasing
confrontation with the forces of the state, the forms of struggle
developed during the 50’s and the 60’s - strong local shop -
floor organization - are seen to be becoming inadequate.

Trades union officials will become more prone to selling out
their members, not because they are right-wing, nor because
they are inherently treacherous, but because the objective soc -
ial position of trades union officials, right and left alike, as a
bureaucratic caste vacillating between bosses and workers,
means that in a period of naked class war their social base is
threatened. The problem facing militants is not so much a cri¬
sis in leadership (an idea which reformulates the problem but
does not answer it) but rather an institutional and organisation¬
al crisis.

What is absolutely necessary is the development of organisatioal
forms which correspond to the imperatives of the levels of
struggle in the immediate future. What is needed is a form of
organisation which can overcome the sectionalism and fragment¬
ation of the British labour movement and the not infrequent
isolation of individual militants, so that events like the interven¬
tion of the Birmingham engineers at Saltley becomes the rule
rather than the exception. The possibility for such progress
lies in rank and file groups. The patchy btit encouraging growth
of rank and file groups in various unions and combines organ -
ised around papers like “ The Collier”, "Carworker" "Dockwor-
ker", “Building Workers’ Charter" etc. provides a key to the
solution of the immediate needs of militants.

Up and till now these rank and file groups, though they have
begun to break down the problems of fragmentation and isol -
ation of militants, have done little to face the problems faced
by sectionalism. Nevertheless, it seems that the I.S. are going to
make an attempt to weld them together into a national struc -
ture - the ambition being to bring together the already signif -
icant minority of militants in the working class into a new
National Minority Movement. The Social Worker industrial
conference at Manchester in the Autumn is expected to raise
such perspectives. We must give critical support to the I.S. on
this position as well as pressing for local committees of struggle
which will generalise local struggles and facilitate victory in
local situatios.

Of course, there are real dangers in supporting the I.S. in this
venture. Firstly, the attempt to form a new National Minority
Movement may be doomed to failure because of the industrial
strength of the C.P. and the continuing dominance of left re -
formist ideas among industrial militants. (There is evidence
that the C.P.’s continuing accommodation to the twists and
turns of left T.U. bureaucrats, particularly Scanlon and Jones,
is increasingly coming into opposition with the needs of its
industrial .militants. For example, a number of (^militants

were bewildered by the policy of the Party in the building wor-
kers’ strike where the leadership swung behind the UCATT bu¬
reaucracy, refusing to publish “Building Workers’ Charter” and,
as a finale, sending dowma couple of hatchet men from King
Street to silence C.P. members'in Birmingham who were leading
a campaign against the actual settlement! This is not to suggest
that militants will leave the Party in droves but rather that
there is a contradiction between the Party line and the needs of
its militants, a contradiction that has to be exploited.)

Secondly, there is the danger that I.S. may dominate and bureau
cratise a national rank and file organisation as they have done
in the Teachers’ Rank and File where libertarians have had to
form an opposition to fight bureaucracy and lack of democracy
in the organisation so that Rank and File can fight bureaucracy
and lack of democracy in the NUT. Thirdly, the whole thing
may degenerate into an I.S. recruiting campaign. Finally, it is
quite conceivable that a national rank and file organisation may
itself become obsolete as an organisation of struggle, and that
to lay too much emphasis on building such an organisation
opens the way to an emphasis on means of struggle rather than
on the ends of struggle.

However, they are problems which have to be faced on a theor -
etical and practical level sooner or later. The revolutionary
left has to take on the C.P. on a political level in industry some
time. One of the positive contributions libertarians can make
in a rank and file movement at the moment is precisely the arg¬
ument for democracy within the movement and pointing out
the dangers of bureaucratisation. To confuse organisation of
struggle against capitalism with institutions which can bring
about socialism is a disastrous political position. We have to
continually stress that a national organisation of rank and file
militants is an organisational form corresponding to a particular
level of struggle - no more, no less, and is certainly not a shad¬
ow federation of workers’ councils.

The real question for libertarians is whether we want to become
a cedible part, however small, of the British labour movement.
If we do, we have to participate in the establishment of a
Minority Movement, whatever our reservations about the inten¬
tions of I.S. and the danger of creeping economism. To delay
to postpone our decision, to adopt a wait and see approach,
could well be a disaster. If we miss the boat this time, libertar¬
ian politics inBritain will consist of sterile sectarian wrangling
self-indulging carping criticism of other groups, continuing isol¬
ation from the working class, and, at most, the formulation of
formally correct positions without the ability or the influence
to fight for our politics in the working class. The opportunities
for the revolutionary left have never been greater - we can’t
afford to waste them.

FOOTNOTES.

ft) The Sunday Times. 29 July 1973.

(2) International Socialism 59.

(3) The Economist. 18 August 1973.

14) Direct Action - An Outline of Workshop and

Socail Organization. 6aI/acher and Camp'be //'.

12

POSTSCRIPT

Heath's Phase 3 proposals were greeted in the bourgeois
Press with headlines like "It's more all round" and "Ted
gives us some cheer", but careful examination shows- that
the Phase 3 restrictions are npthinq but-a disguised wage
cut. For-workers, the t2.25 ceiling is hopelessly inad¬
equate given the rise in the cost of living. The prod¬
uctivity "bonus" will only come into effect three months
after the increased, while the miserable 40p safety-net
will only be given when the cost of living rises by 7X.
Of course, the bosses have something to cheer about: co
controls on prices and profits - such as they were -
have been relaxed.

The fact that Heath's only major concession in the Phase
3 package was the "flexibility" clause is indicative of
the frailty of British capitalism and the vulnerability
of the Tory government. Heath was unable to give sel¬
ective food subsidies which could have provided the basis
for a deal with the Trade Union leaders, but he did offe^
the "anti-social hours" clause as an attempt to buy off
the miners. The Tories are being pulled in two differ¬
ent directions at the same time: on the one hand, they
are terrified of the prospect of a major confrontation.
Particularly one led by the miners, while on the other
hand, they are unable to provide the sort of measures
(food subsidies etc. } which could prevent one.

More importantly. Heath had depended for the success of
Phase 3 on the slowing down of inflation and the contin¬
uation of expansion .. The energy crisis has rendered this
impossible. The balance of payments problem (two record
deficits in October and November), coupled with the ener¬
gy crisis, has precipated the capitalist crisis which
would have occured anyway in early 1975. The only sol¬
ution for the Tories is a massive cutback in productiv¬
ity and cutdown in consumer spending so that resources
can be directed towards exports. Hence the three-day
week and Barber’s mini-budget.

As the crisis of British capitalism is intensified by
the "competitive recession" of other capitalists nations
the working-class is facing a slump whose effects could
be worse than that of the 1930's. . Consequently,
political and organizational qjestions of the working-
class movement are becoming increasingly more urgent.

The coming struggle is likely to be decisive - a major
defeat for the working-class will put back the movement
years. The key political and organizational demands
must be ones which unite the mass of the working-class
on the basis of a combined onslaught on the Tory govern¬
ment. Revolutionaries must work for the immediate form¬
ation of local Councils of Action, composed initially of
socialists and militants, whose immediate tasks would be
to gain mass support through its intervention in and co¬
ordination of local struggles, and to prepare for a Gen¬
eral Strike. We have to recognize that 1974 will be the
year when the question of power will be the central
issue. In these conditions the alternatives for the
working-class and the revolutionary left are stark and
brutal: lose and suffer a defeat potentially more dis-
asterous than that of 1926, or start organizing for a
General Strike and the establishment of institutions of
proletarian power.

Organisation of
Revolutionary Anarchists

FOR INFORMATION ON ORA WRITE TO

24 Moss St., Vbrlc.

ARTICLES, SUBS, ORDERS FOR
LIBERTARIAN STRUGGLE TO

20 Cardigan R eh

I C

LCCUbU

13

THE TWO
OCTOBERS

BY PK3TR
ARCH I NOV

The victorious revolution of the writers and peasants
in 1917 was legally established in the Bolshevik
calender as the October Revolution. There is some
truth in this, but it is not entirely exact. In
October 1917 the writers and peasants of Russia sur-
mounted a colossal obstacle to the development of
their Revolution. They abolished the nominal power
of the capitalist class, but even before that they
achieved something of equal revolutionaiy importance
and perhaps even more fundamental. By taking the
economic power from the capitalist class, and the
land from the large owners in the countryside, they
achieved the right to free and uncontrolled work in
the towns, if not the total control of the factories.
Consequently, it was well before October that the
revolutionary workers destroyed the base of capital¬
ism. All that was left was the superstructure. If
there had not been this general expropriation of the
capitalists by the workers, the destruction of the
bourgeois state machine - the political revolution -
would not have succeeded in any way. The resistance
of the owners would have been much stronger. On the
other hand, the objectives of the social revolution
in October were not limited to the overthrow of cap¬
italist power. A long period of practical development
in social self-management was before the workers, but
it was to fail in the following years.

Translated by
North London ORA

Therefore, in considering the evolution of the
Russian socialist Revolution as a whole, October
appears only as a stage - a powerful and decisive
stage, it is true. That is why October does not by
itself represent the whole social revolution. In
thinking of the victorious October days, one must
consider that historical circumstance as determined
by the Russian social revolution.

14

Another no less important peculiarity is that October
has two meanings - that which the working masses
who participated in the social revolution gave it,
and with them the Anarchist-Communists, and that
which was given it hv the political party that cap¬
tured power from this aspiration to social revol¬
ution , and which betrayed and stifled all further
development. An enormous gulf exists between these
two interpretations of October. The October of the
workers and peasants is the suppression of the power
of the parasite classes in the name of equality and
self-management. Tha Bolshevik October is the con¬
quest of power by the party of the revolutionary
intelligentsia, the installation of its ‘State
Socialist and of its ‘socialist’ methods of govern¬
ing the masses.

The workers’ October

The February Revolution caught the different rev¬
olutionary parties in complete disarray and with¬
out any doubt they were considerably surprised by
the profound social character of the dawning revol¬
ution. At first, no one except the Anarchists
wanted to believe it. The Bolshevik Party, which
made out it always expressed the most radical aspir¬
ations of the working-class,, could not go beyond, the
limits of the bourgeois revolution in its aims. It
was only at the April conference that they asked
themselves what was really happening in Russia.

Was it only the overthrow of Tsarism, or was the
revolution going further - as far as the overthrow
of capitalism ? This last eventually posed to the
Bolsheviks the question of what tactics to enploy.
Lenin became conscious before the other Bolsheviks
of the social character of the revolution, and
emphasized the necessity of seizing power. He saw
a decisive advance in the workers’ and peasants’
movement which was undermining the industrial and
rural bourgeois foundations more and more. A un¬
animous agreement on these questions could not be
reached even up tp the October days. The Party
manoeuvred all this time between the social slogans
of the masses and the conception of a social-demo¬
cratic revolution, from where they were created and
developed. Not opposing the slogan of petit- and
grand-bourgeoisie for a Constituent Assembly, the
Party did its best to control the masses, striving
to keep up with their eve^ increasing pace.

During this time, the workers marched inpetuously
forward, relentlessly running their enemies of left
and right into the ground. The big rural landowners
began everywhere to evacuate the countryside, flee¬
ing from the insurgent peasantry and seeking pro¬
tection for their possessions and their persons in

the towns. Meanwhile, the peasantry proceeded to a
direct re-distribution of land, and did not want to
hear of peaceful co-existence with the landlords.

In the towns as well a sudden change took place
between the workers and the owners of enterprises.
Thanks to the efforts of the collective genius of
the masses, workers’ committees sprang up in every
industry, intervening directly in production, putt¬
ing aside the admonishments of the owners and con¬
centrating on eliminating them from production.

Thus in different parts of the country, the workers
got down to the socialization of industry.

Simultaneously, all of revolutionary Russia was
covered with a vast network of workers’ and peasants’
soviets, which began to function as organs of self¬
management. They developed, prolonged, and defended
the Revolution. Capitalist rule and order still
existed nominally in the country, but a vast system
of social and economic workers’ self-management was
being created alongside it. This regime of soviets
and factory committees, by the very fact of its
appearance, menaced the state system with death. It
must be made clear that the birth and development
of the soviets and factory committees had nothing to
do with authoritarian principles. On the contrary,
they were in the full sense of the term organs of
social and economic self-management of the masses,
and in no case the organs of State power. They were
opposed to the State machine which sought to direct
the masses, and they prepared for a decisive battle
against it ‘ The factories to the workers, the land
to the peasants ’ - these were the slogans by which
the revolutionary masses of town and country part¬
icipated in the defeat of the State machine of the
possessing classes in the name of a new social
system which was founded on the basic cells of the
factory committees and the economic and social
soviets. These catch-words circulated from one end
of workers’ Russia to the other, deeply affecting
the direct action against the socialist-bourgeois
coalition government.

As was explained above, the workers and peasants
had already worked towards the entire reconstruction
of the industrial and agrarian system of Russia
before October 1917. The agrarian question was vir¬
tually solved by the poor peasants as early as June-
September 1917. The urban workers, for their part,
put into operation organs of social and economic
self-management, having seized from the State and
the owners the organizational functions of production.
The October Revolution of the workers overthrew the
last and the greatest obstacle to their revolution -
the state power of the owning classes, already defeated
and disorganized. This last evolution opened a vast
horizon for the achievement of the social revolution.

15

putting it onto the creative road of socialist re¬
construction of society, already pointed at by the
workers in the preceding months. That is the October
of the workers and the peasants. It meant a powerful
attempt by the exploited manual workers to destroy
totally the foundations of capitalist society, and to
build a workers’ society based on the principles of
equality, independence, and self-management by the pro¬
letariat of the towns and the countryside. This October
did not reach its natural conclusion. It was violently
interrupted by the October of the Bolsheviks, who pro¬
gressively extended their dictatorship throughout the
country.

The Bolshevik October

All the statist parties, including the Bolsheviks,
limited the boundaries of the Russian Revolution to the
installation of a social-democratic regime. It was
only when the workers and peasants of all Russia began
to shake the agraro-bourgeois order, when the social
revolution was proved to be an irreversible historical
fact, that the Bolsheviks began discussing the social
character of the Revolution, and the consequent nec¬
essity of modifying its tactics. There was no unanimity
in the Party on questions of the character and orient¬
ation of the events which had taken place, even up to
October. Furthermore, the October Revolution as well
as the events which followed developed while the Central
Conmittee of the Party was divided into two tendencies.
Whilst a part of the Central Comnittee, Lenin at its
head, foresaw the inevitable social revolution and
proposed preparation for the seizure of power, the
other tendency, led hy Zinoviev and Kamenev, denounced
as adventurist the attenpt at social revolution, and
went no further than calling for a Constituent Assembly
in which the Bolsheviks occupied the seats furthest to
the Left. Lenin's point of view prevailed, and the
Party began to mobilize its forces in case of a dec¬
isive struggle by the masses against the Provisional
Government.

The party threw itself into infiltrating the factory
coimnittees and the soviets of workers’ deputies, doing
i ts best to obtain in these organs of self-management
the most mandates possible in order to oontrol their
actions. Nevertheless, the Bolshevik conception of,
and approach to, the soviets and the factory comnittees
was fundamentally different from that of the masses.
While the mass of workers considered than to be the
organs of social and economic self-management, the
Bolshevik Party looked on them as a means by which it
was possible to snatch the power of the sinking
bourgeoisie, and afterwards to use this power to
serve the interests of the Party. Thus an enormous
difference was revealed between the revolutionary
masses and the Bolshevik Party in their conceptions
and perspectives of October. In the first case, it
was the question of the defeat of power with the view
of reinforcing and enlarging the already constituted

organs of workers and peasants self-management. In
the second case, it was'"the question of leaning on
these organs in order to seize power and to subordinate
all the revolutionary forces to the Party. This
divergence played a fatal role in determining the
future course of the Russian Revolution.

The success of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution
- that is to say, the fact that they found themselves
in power and from there subordinated the whole Rev¬
olution to their Party - is explained hy their ability
to substitute the idea of a Soviet power for the social
revolution and the social emancipation of the masses.

A priori, these two ideas appear as non-contradictory
for it was possible to understand Soviet power as the
power of the soviets, and this facilitated the substit¬
ution of the idea of Soviet power for that of the
Revolution. Nevertheless, in their realization and
consequences these ideas were in viol ait contradiction
to each other. The conception of Soviet power incar¬
nated in the Bolshevik state, was transformed into an
entirely traditional bourgeois power concentrated in
a handful of individuals who subjected to their author¬
ity all that was fundamental and most powerful in the
life of the people - in this particular case, the social
revolution. Therefore, with the help of the ‘ power of
the soviets ’ - in which the Bolsheviks monopolized most
of the posts - they effectively attained a total power
and could proclaim their dictatorship throughout the
revolutionary territory.

This furnished them with the possibility of strangling
all the revolutionary currents of the workers in dis¬
agreement with their doctrine of altering the whole
course of the Russian Revolution and of making it adopt
a multitude of measures contrary to its essence. One
of these measures was the militarisation of labour
during the years of War Communism - militarisation of
the workers so that millions of swindlers and parasites
could live in peace, luxury and idleness. Another
measure was the war between town and country, provoked
by the policy of the Party in considering peasants as
elements unreliable and foreign to the Revolution.

There was, finally, the strangling of libertarian
thought and of the Anarchist movement, whose social
ideas and catchwords were the force of the Russian
Revolution and orientated towards a social revolution.
Other measures consisted of the proscription of the
indepardent workers movement, the smothering of the
freedom of speech of workers in general. All was
reduced to a single centre, from where all instructions
emanated concerning the way of life, of thought, of
action of the working masses.

That is the October of the Bolsheviks. In it was in¬
carnated the ideal followed by decades by the
revolutionary intelligentsia, finally realised now hy
the wholesale dictatorship of the All-Russian Communist
Party. This ideal satisfies the ruling intelligentsia,
despite the catastrophic consequences for the workers;
now they can celebrate with porqp the anniversary of
ten years of power.

16

The Anarchists

Revolutionary Anarohls. the
current to extol the idea of a social revolution hy
the workers and peasants, as much during the 1905
Revolution as from the first days of the October Rev¬
olution. In fact, the role they could have played
would have been colossal, and so could have been the
means Of struggle employed by the masses themselves.
Likewise, no politico-social theory could have blended
so harmoniously with the spirit .and orientation of the
Revolution. The interventions of the Anarchist orators
in 1917 were listened to with a rare trust and atten¬
tion by the workers. One could have said that the
revolutionary potential of the workers and peasants, to¬
gether with the ideological and tactical power of Anarch¬
ism could have representated a force to which nothing
could be opposed. Unhappily, this fusion did not
take place. Some isolated Anarchists occasionally
led intense revolutionary activity among the workers,
but there was not an Anarchist organization of great
size to lead more continuous and co-ordinated actiOTS.

( outside of the Nabat Confederation and the Makhno-
vchtina in the Ukraine ). Only such an organisation
could have united the Anarchists and the millions 0 1
workers. During such an inport ant and advantageous
revolutionary period, the Anarchists limited themselves
to the restricted activities of small groups instead of
orientating themselves to mass political action. Hiey
preferred to drown themselves in the sea °f their
internal quarrels, not attesting to pose P
of a common policy and tactic of Anarch!™.^ tlus^
deficiency, they condensed themselves to inaction an^
sterility during the most inportant moments of the Rev
olution.

The causes of this catastrophic state of the Anarchist
movement resided in the dispersion, the disorganis¬
ation and the absence of a collective tactic - things
which have nearly always been raised as principles among
Anarchists, preventing them making a single organisation
al step so that they could orientate the social rev¬
olution in a decisive fashion. There is no actual advan
tage in denouncing those who, by their demogogy, their
thoughtlessness, and their irresponsibility, contributed
to create this situation. But the tragic experience
which led the working masses to defeat, and Anarchism
to the edge of the abyss, should be assimilated as from
now. We must combat and pitilessly stigmatise those

who, in one way or another, continue to perpetuate the

chaos and confusion in Anarchism, all those who obstruct
its re-establishment or organisation. In other words,
those whose actions go against those efforts of the
movement for the emancipation of labour and the real¬
isation of the Anarchist-Oonmunist society. The working
masses appreciate and are instinctively attracted hy
Anarchism, but will not work with the Anarchist movement
until they aT- e convinced of its theoretical and organ¬
isational coherence, It is necessary for everyone of us
to try to the maximum to attain this coherence.

Conclusions and

Perspectives

The Bolshevik practice of the last ten years shows
clearly the counter-revolutionary of their dictatorship
of the Party. Every year it restrains a little more the
social and political rights of the workers, and takes
their revolutionary conquests - away. There is no doubt
that the * historic mission ’ of the Bolshevik Party is
enptied of all meaning and that it will attenpt to bring
the Russian Revolution to its final objective : State
C^)italism of the enslaving salariat, that is to say, of
the reinforced power of the exploiters and at the in¬
creasing misery of the exploited. In speaking of the
Bolshevik Party as part of the socialist intelligentsia,
exercising its power over the forking masses of town and
country, we have in view its central directing nucleus
which, by its origins, its formation, and its life-style
has nothing in cannon with the working-class, and despi¬
te that, rules all the details of life of the Party and
of the people. That nucleus will attenpt to stay above
the proletariat, wbo have nothing to expect from it.

The possibilities for rank and file Party militants,
including the Oomnnist youth, appear different. This
mass has passively participated in the negative and
counter-revolutionary policies of the Party, but having
come from the working-class, it is capable of becoming
aware of the authentic October of the workers and
peasants and of coming towards it. We do not doubtn
that from this mass will come many fighters for the
workers’ October. Let us hope that they rapidly ass¬
imilate the Anarchist character of this Ootober, and
that they come to its aid. On our side, let us indic¬
ate this character as much as possible, and help the
masses to reconquer and conserve the great revolutionary
achievements.

17

NOTES ON RUSSIAN

STATE CAPITALISM

by Peter Newell

T HE RULERS of Russia, and their paid hacks, have recently
been celebrating "fifty years of the USSR',' and extolling the
virtues and advantages of "socialism" in that country. Mankind
has been fed, and has believed, many myths; but the one that
has proclaimed "socialism" in Russia is probably one of the
greatest and most pernicious ever perpetrated. Such lies have
been exposed by libertarian socialists and many anarchists,
not merely since the formation of the so-called Union of Sov¬
iet Socialist Republics fifty years ago, but within weeks of
the Bolsheviks assuming power. As myths die hard, it will
not come amiss if we remind ourselves of what has been said.

Even before the coming to power of the Bolsheviks in Russia,
Peter Kropotkin exposed the arguments of the "State Social -
ists" and Social Democrats, including the supporters of Lenin,
that they could - by their methods and policies - bring about
genuine socialism or communism. In his MODERN SCIENCE
AND AN ARCH ISM he writes; 'We see in the organisation of
the posts and telegraphs, in the State railways, and the tike -
which are represented as illustrations of a society without cap -
italists - nothing but a new, perhaps improved, but still undes¬
irable form of the wages system. We even think that such a
solution of the social problem would so much run against the
present libertarian tendencies of civilised mankind, that it sim¬
ply would be unrealisable. We maintain that State organisation,
having been the force to which minorities resorted for estab -
lishing and organising their power over the masses, cannot be
the force which will serve to destroy these privileges'!

Kropotkin called such an arrangement STATE CAPITALISM.

As early as April, 1918, Lenin admitted that the Bolsheviks had
jettisoned "the principles of the Paris Commune" and claimed
in his LEFT-WING COMMUNISM - AN INFANTILE DIS¬
ORDER that 'State Capitalism would be a step forward with
the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic!

Furthermore, the charge that the Bolsheviks (now calling them¬
selves Communists) had introduced "State Capitalism" rather
than "proletarian socialism" soon became a major and recur -
rent theme among anarchists and, to some extent.Social Rev -
olutionaries and a few Menshevik Internationalists such as J.
Martov. The Briansk Federation of Anarchists, in their journ¬

al, VESTNIK ANARKHII (July 14 1918) were about the
earliest critics of Lenin's State Capitalism. They were soon fol¬
lowed by "M.Sergven" (generally assumed to be a nom-de •
plume of Grigorii Maksimov) in the September 16 issue of the
journal, VOL'NYI GOLOS TRUDA, in a long article entitled
"Paths of Revolution'.’ The article was a severe indictment of
the Bolsheviks' so-called dictatorship of the proletariat, which
had in fact merely resulted in the substitution of State Capit -
alism for private capitalism. The workers and peasants, he clai¬
med, now found themselves under the heel of a new class of
administrators and bosses. What had taken place in Russia, the
article went on,resembled, and was similar to, the earlier bour¬
geois revolutions in Western Europe; ' Ato sooner had the op¬
pressed farmers and craftsmen of England and France removed
the landed aristocracy from power than the ambitious middle-
class stepped into the breech and erected a new class structure
with itself at the top; in a similar manner, the privileges and
authority once shared by the Russian nobility and bourgeoisie
has passed into the hands of a new ruling class composed of
Communist Party officials, government bureaucrats and tech¬
nical specialists'!

Under the centralised rule of Lenin and his Party, concluded
"Sergven" Russia entered a period of State Capitalism rather
than socialism. "State Capitalism was the new dam before the
waves of our social revolution" The writer of the article, then
lamented that the anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists were too
poorly organised to keep the revolution from being diverted
into non-socialist and non-libertarian channels. The Russian
people had begun the revolution spontaneously, but lacked
the libertarian organisation to carry it further, or to stop the
Bolsheviks and State "socialists" from getting power and tak¬
ing control. The expression "State Capitalism" was used by the
anarchists to designate the concentration of political power,
together with State ownership of the means of production.

The State had become the exploiter in place of a multiplicity
of private capitalist concerns. The workers remained slaves -
wage slaves of the State.

This was brought out sharply during the Kronstadt revolt in
March, 1921. An article in the Kronstadt IZVESTIIA VREM—
ENNOGO REVOLIUTSIONNOGO KOMITETA of March 8
clearly analyses the situation in Russia at that time. The writer
(who was probably Petrichenko) says;

18

"After carrying out the October Revolution, the working class
hoped to achieve its emancipation. But the result was an even
greater enslavement of the human personality. The power of
the police and gendarme Monarchy passed into the hands of
the Communist usurpers, who, instead of giving the peqple
freedom, instilled in them the constant fear of falling into the
torture chambers of the CHEKA ."

"But most infamous and criminal of all is the moral servitude
which the Communists have inaugurated; they have laid their
hands also on the inner world of the toilers, forcing them to
think in a Communist way. With the help of the bureaucratised
Trade Unions, they have fastened the workers to their benches,
so that labour has become not a joy but a new form of slavery".

Hopefully, the writer concludes;

'The workers and peasants steadfastly march forward, leaving
behind them the Constituent Assembly, with its bourgeois re ■
gime, and the dictatorship of the Communist Party, with its
CHEKA and its State Capitalism, whose hangman's noose en¬
circles their necks and threatens to strangle them to death. The
present overturn at last gives the toilers the opportunity to have
their freely elected Soviets, operating without the slightest for¬
ce of Party pressure, and to remake the bureaucratised Trade
Unions into free associations of workers, peasants and the lab¬
ouring intelligentsia. At last the policeman's dub of the Com¬
munist autocracy has been broken'!

Also in exife, Maximov on a number of occasions condemns the
Communists rulers of Russia for imposing, and developing, a
bureaucratic State Capitalist regime. And in his EUROPEAN
IDEOLOGIES: A SURVEY OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY
POLITICAL IDEAS, Rudolf Rockers observes;

' In Russia, where the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat
has ripened into reality, the aspirations of a particular Party for
power have prevented any truly socialistic reorganisation of ec¬
onomic life, and have forced the country into the slavery of a
grinding State Capitalism

At this point, however, it is fair to mention that not all anarch¬
ists have categorised the Soviet Union as State Capitalist.In the
main, "professional" anarchists, such as Alexander Berkman,
Emma Goldman and Voline were never able to analyse the form
of society that emerged and developed in Russia. * Voline gen¬
erally referred to it as "State Socialism" and Berkman, as late
as 1929, when he was writing his ABC OF ANARCHISM, still
imagined that the Bolsheviks wanted communism, but that un¬
like anarchists, they hoped to impose it on the workers. The
so-called professional revolutionaries, like Goldman and Berk¬
man, took a long time in becoming really disillusioned with Bol¬
shevik "communism" They never really appreciated that, with
its State ownership of the land and means of production, its
highly differentiated wages system and its primitive accumulat¬
ion of (State) capital, Russia was merely developing - in a
bureaucratic State form - what the West.had developed years
before — capitalism !

Unfortunately, it was not yet to be.

IN 1926, Archinov, Malmo and Ida Mett returned to the sub -
ject in their "Organisational Platform" They rightly pointed
out that the seizing of power, through a so-called Socialist Par¬
ty, and the organising of a so-called "Proletarian State',' cannot
serve the cause of emancipation. 'The State, immediately and
supposedly constructed for defence of the Revolution, invari -
ably ends up distorted by needs and characteristics peculiar to
itself; itself becoming the goal, produces specific, privileged

castes on which it depends ." It subsequently re-establishes

the basis of a new Capitalist Authority and State, with the us -
ual enslavement and exploitation of the masses.

And it is this - State Capitalism - that the rulers of the so-cal¬
led USSR have been celebrating; not socialism or genuine com¬
munism. The revolution for free or libertarian communism is
yet to be. That will be the Third Revolution advocated by the
Russian anarchists since 1918.

* In Britain,long-standing anarchists and contributors to
FREEDOM are still just as much at "sixes and sevens"regard -
ing the nature of the Soviet system. More than one writer
thinks it is communism !

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Reviews

THE TYRANNY OF STRUCTURELESSNESS THE POLITICS OF HOMOSEXUALITY

by Jo Freeman, published by Leeds Women’s ORA,price.5p By DON MILLIGAN (Pluto Press 23p)

Jill’

20

“THE MULTINATIONALS”

(Pelican 50p) by ChristopherTugendhat.

Apart from an introduction for the Pelican edition this is
Tugendhat’s 1971 book, but it has certainly appeared in paper
back at the appropriate moment when the public is becoming
very aware of the power of multinational companies. It deserves
a widereadership, although the author as a former Conservative
M.P. and leader writer for the “Financial Times” is definitely
one of the enemy, he has gathered together in readable form
some enlightening information.

Multinationals are very large companies which produce and sell
their goods in different usually far-flung countries. Examples
are ford, IBM and Shell. They have the striking characteristic
of being under strict central direction with the subsidiaries all
working within a framework established by an overall group
plan drawn up at headquarters. Central direction with such
huge organisations depends for its effectiveness on rapid and
reliable air travel, an efficient telephone, telegraph and telex
system, and computers capable of handling a mass of informat -
ion. Multinationals have an important place in the industrial
and economic life of most powerful nations and occupy leading
positions in key manufacturing industries. They have increased
in importance rapidly over'the last twenty-five years: between
1946 and 1969 the book value of American foreign direct in¬
vestments rose from 7,200 million dollars to 70,763 million
dollars. As a result, U.S. companies now account for an estim¬
ated 60 to 65 per cent of all foreign direct investment. By 1980
it is estimated that foreign-owned internationals will account
for about half of total exports of many Western European coun¬
tries, and locally-owned internationals for much of the rest.

Prof. Perlmutter believes that by 1985 world industry will be
dominated by 200 or 300 very large international companies
responsible for the greater part of industrial output.

This poses several problems for governments. The most dram -
atic is speculation. Money flows “like giant waves from one
country to another’,’ remarks an EEC official, and these waves
are beyond the control of governments - the pace and directi¬
on of the money movements within each multinational group
is directed by the central headquarters of the group. During two
days prior to German revaluation in 1971 two thousand mill -
ion dollars were exchanged into German marks. Ford’s has an
economist, according to Tugendhat, who has been right with
69 of his 75 forecasts of when devaluations will occur ! More

4,

vital in the longer term isrthe multinationals’ power to decide
on investment. This when a company can select whichever
country offers the best industrial, economic sales and political
prospects for its new plants and facilities. A government very
anxious to secure a large investment running into several hund¬
reds of millions of pounds can alter certain rules of the game
to attract the investment. Companies which have the power to
allocate markets, have freedom of choice where to invest and
make it known that strict tax controls are not an attractive fea¬
ture of a country’s organisation, are unlikelv to be treated fav¬
ourably.

On tax, multinational companies tend to employ one set of ex -
pertsto discover what the tax rules are and another set to advise
on how to get round them. Additional investment is not encou¬
raged in countries where pressure from tax officials is over
zealous.

Trade unionists have become very alarmed at the power of mul¬
tinational companies over the work force. Ford’s workers were
reminded during their month long strike in 1969 that production
and new investment could be switches to plants abroad, t The
other side of this coin is that the strike at Fords of Britain had
within a week led to the laying off of 2,000 men in the Belgian
Ford plant. Whilst 89 millon dollars worth of production
was lost in Britain, 26.4 million dollars worth was lost in Belgium
and Germany. Another factor in this area is that companies
fear large profits will provoke large wage claims from trade uni¬
ons so by book-keeping they keep the level of subsidiaries’ pro¬
fits in certain countries at a modest level. The companies have
a huge advantage over trade unions in that thay have access to
all the companies’ international figures whilst the trade union
has to make do with national subsidiaries’ figures only.

Tugendhat mainly excludes the relation of multinational comp¬
anies to the Third World, concentrating on the developed, in¬
dustrialised countries. This helps to make his book compact
but the missing area is so vital in the source of raw materials
that it strikes this writer that if Counter-Information Services
could supply a comprehensive world survey of multinationals
they would be doing an essential, if onerous, job. Another
mind-boggling factor Tugendhat misses is the coming energy
crunch. At one stage he muses on what would happen if IBM
went bankrupt, governments suddenly being faced with many
thousands of unemployed men, but imagine the results of the
bankruptcy of the oil companies and the motor car manufac -
turers, both leading multinationals extremely vulnerable to the
world scarcity of oil, and see where it leads you !

JERRY WESTALL

THE PRESS FUHD,

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